There have been a lot of big changes at Avnet lately, the most recent being a big executive switch-up. Fred Cuen, who was president of Avnet Technology Solutions Americas, has left the company – a move the distie says was “mutually agreed upon.” Whatever that means.
Reading between the lines, it’s clear that something wasn’t working.
In an earlier release stating its most recent earnings, Avnet said it had much lower than expected revenues in one business unit and lackluster sales in some other key products. So, clearly, the distie wasn’t about to just sit on its laurels and wait for business to pick up. Unfortunately for Cuen, that meant getting the boot – whether it was mutual or not.
Now Jeff Bawol, who’s been with the distie for 29 years and was most recently in charge of Avnet’s enterprise software and storage solutions group, has been named as Cuen’s replacement.
So why Bawol? When heading up the software and storage group, that group excelled over other parts of the organization. Bawol attributes that success to “enabling partners” – beyond the basics of providing VARs with leads. Now he’ll be bringing that concept across the board, with plans to focus on areas such as virtualization, networking, VoIP, unified messaging and, of course, storage.
What’s interesting, however, is that many top-level executives have left or been laid off over the past few months. In April, Anna McDermott – Avnet’s senior vice-president of customer engagement – stepped down to pursue an opportunity to run her own company.
And in March, Avnet laid off about two per cent of its Technology Solutions Americas associates, which included Mark Kulaga, who ran Avnet’s IBM distribution business in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Australia (and supposedly, that business was actually doing quite well under his direction).
So what’s going on? It’s not like Avnet has been losing money hand over fist. Its most recent sales and earnings met expectations – though those expectations had been previously lowered. So, in a sense, it didn’t really meet those original expectations.
And the technology solutions business here in the Americas hasn’t experienced the same growth rates as EMEA and Asia. Now, that’s not exactly unusual, but then you have to take a look at the numbers. While sales in the Americas increased 2.9 per cent in the third quarter, EMEA saw a growth rate of 21.4 per cent, while Asia saw a whopping 32.4 per cent increase. So clearly, Avnet wants to get its Americas business more in line with those other regions.
Let’s hope for Bawol’s sake he’s up to the task, or he’ll probably “mutually agree” to leave the company. But with a solid track record of enabling VARs, he’ll be an asset to the distie’s partners here in Canada.
