I have to hand it to all the distributors in high tech this week. They did something unprecedented in my opinion.
Last week Tech Data teamed up with Arrow, Avnet, D&H, Ingram Micro, Supercom, and Synnex to participate in one of the largest charity drives ever organized by the Canadian channel.
Each company held a week-long food drive and the distributors together gathered up nearly 3,500 food items to be donated to area food banks.
Bravo to everyone who participated for this worthy cause. You should all be proud of yourselves because I am.
Distributors and social media
It’s time for distributors to embrace social media. Distributors may think they don’t have to take part in this new way to communicate because most of their customers are in their 40s and 50s and they don’t do Twitter or blog but they are wrong.
The new generation of solution provider will be using social media tools to tell the world how great and how bad distributors can be. All the little secrets will be revealed on Twitter or in a blog. In the past if a reseller had an issue with distribution he or she could only vent to a few people. With social media that gets extended to anyone with a smart phone or computing device.
I have heard from numerous distribution executives who are either unwilling or have been mandated to not participate on Facebook or Twitter or even have their own blog. Jim Estill, the former CEO of EMJ and Synnex Canada is the lone exception.
The danger is that your brand will get eroded by social media if you are not out there at the forfront blogging and tweeting to the channel.
Younger executives are entering the channel and guess what they have a Facebook page and they tweet. It’s not a stretch to see that in the near future these young executives might be blogging about Ingram, Tech Data, Synnex and others.
I encourage all my friends in distributor to sign up for Twitter or start blogging before someone else does it for them.
Ingram gets its strategy man
Ingram Micro has hired Sam Kamel to be its senior vice president, corporate strategy, with responsibility for planning, market analysis and business development, with particular emphasis on emerging technologies and adjacency opportunities.
Greg Spierkel, CEO of Ingram, said Kamel will assume the strategy responsibilities from Ria Carlson, who will be adding global branding and corporate social responsibility to her ongoing corporate communications and investor relations responsibilities. She will continue to be a corporate officer and member of the worldwide executive team with the new title of senior vice president, communications and brand management.
“Our strategic priority is driving profitable growth through solid business development and distinct marketplace advantage. We’ve diversified the business through organic growth and acquisitions in higher-margin adjacency areas such as logistics, data capture/point-of-sale, data centre solutions and managed services, and are building capabilities in cloud-based solutions and other new opportunities. These areas require greater technology expertise and new approaches to marketing and branding. At the same time, we have established a leadership position in the area of corporate social responsibility as many of our vendors and customers prefer partners with a commitment to sustainability and strong governance. Ria successfully launched marketing and social responsibility programs earlier this year, and now she will be able to expand those initiatives throughout the world. Sam’s impressive background in business development and emerging technologies at a variety of companies will bring a fresh perspective to our efforts, marrying strategic planning with front-line execution. We’re pleased to welcome Sam to the team,” he said.
