The Will To Succeed

With more than 40 years of success behind him, chair and CEO David Dicker has led dicker data with a simple strategy – be better than the other guys.

- Oliver Featherston

David Dicker, Chair and CEO of Dicker Data, is reticent to spill all the details on the hardware, software and cloud distributor’s strategy. In the old days he would have, he says, but with the locally founded and owned company fighting against big international corporations today, he’s careful to avoid giving them ammunition. It’s an understandable position; competitors are always on the lookout for the next big strategy, and everyone wants to maintain their unique selling points.

But the IT entrepreneur is still willing to outline his business philosophy, and it’s demonstrably different to the way the big guys do it. “We don’t try to make as much money as we can,” David explains. “We have targets in terms of the margins, and we operate in that way. So we don’t operate in that sort of pure capitalism mode, which gets a lot of bad press, where we’re trying to squeeze every dollar.

“What we do is project a year ahead on a month-by-month basis, as to where we want the sales and profit to be for each month. And we make sure we get that number. That’s all we try to do. The whole business is built around that strategy, so there’s never any of this, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get more, let’s get more’. We don’t operate that way. We operate on specific goals for what we want to get and once we’ve got it, we’re happy.”