Three-Minute Interview: Chris Garland

Describe yourself in three words?

Honest, passionate and hard-working.

When you were at school, what did you want to be and why?

I didn’t know what I wanted to be at school but I loved maths, logic and rugby so when I was first introduced to computers – our maths teacher used to take us to the London Science Museum every Sunday to seminars on computing – I was hooked. However, that interest was put on hold while I lived the dream for several years as a semi-professional rugby player, playing for Hertfordshire County first team – where I was the youngest ever player – England Youth, Saracens and Angouleme in France. I studied IT in London with one of the premier computer training companies, where I achieved top place in my year group.

How did you get to be where you are today?

Hard work, commitment, honesty and a passion for helping people. I originally worked for Bransom, which had grown into a large IBM software house in London running multi-million pound contracts with many blue-chip industry leading companies. The jewellery section of the business was growing but had little to do with the main direction of the company, so three of us bought out the jewellery division and started a new company. That old adage, “I liked the company so much I bought it”. From then we have specialised in the jewellery retail trade and gone from strength to strength to become the largest specialist jewellery system provider in the UK, working closely with the NAJ, the buying groups and leading brands to provide a service second to none in the industry.

Which aspect of your job do you enjoy and why?

Engaging with retailers to help them understand and benefit from the analytical data in bsmart to drive their business forward and I run masterclasses to support that.

What is your proudest achievement?

As a company our proudest achievement was when we achieved a Microsoft Silver competency in application development, which puts us in the top 5% of companies globally to achieve this status. Being an MS Silver partners opens many development doors for us including tools not openly available on the market which strengthens our capabilities to build connectivity with the full range of Microsoft products. This means we can better serve our customers and enables us to deploy services more competitively. As a direct result, we have recently delivered some great cloud based products into the market.

What is the best advice you’ve been given in work or in life in general?

Not to take things too seriously – some people or things in life generally can be upsetting and you just have to step back sometimes, take a deep breath and move on.

What is your next goal?

Our new cloud based solutions being rolled out are hugely exciting and working with the very latest Microsoft, Google and other emerging technologies is simply brilliant. We’re creating a whole new world helping retailers and consumers interact in more socially engaging ways.