William Amelio, President and CEO, Lenovo
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William Amelio's resum sounds like the Johnny Cash version of "I've Been Everywhere." He's been to Lehigh University and Stanford University, to Honeywell and its predecessor, AlliedSignal, to NCR, where he ran retail and finance, to Raleigh, N.C., where he ran manufacturing of IBM PCs, and to Beijing and Hong Kong, where he was in charge of Dell's Asia-Pacific business.
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And now he's back in Raleigh as president and CEO of Lenovo.
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Out of all his stops, perhaps nowhere has his job been more challenging than behind the CEO desk at Lenovo, the Chinese company that last year bought the former IBM PC Co. and is now struggling to create its own identity outside Beijing.
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Amelio promises Lenovo's strategy is to embrace the channel and rely on it almost entirely for what the company refers to as "transactional" business—sales to small and midsize companies. In most cases in North America, Lenovo will also bring its partners into "relationship" sales—deployments to larger companies. "Our major thrust is to go after the small-medium business space," Amelio, 48, told financial analysts. "We think that's an opportunity to grow. We're enlisting tier-two partners at a very feverish pace. We see pretty good opportunities for us going forward."
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Amelio does face hurdles, however. Lenovo is losing money in the United States and fighting pricing pressures from Hewlett-Packard, Dell and the custom-system channel. And there has been public skepticism.
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Just months after he took the top job at Lenovo, his former boss at Dell, CEO Kevin Rollins, publicly ripped Amelio and others who left his company. "Some have left because they were drawn away by an opportunity we could not give them. Some we were fine with them leaving," Rollins said. "And you'll have to figure out which is which. If there is someone who just wants desperately to have a CEO title, they're not going to get it at Dell. They'll have to get it somewhere else."
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Amelio did, and since Rollins' remarks he's fought back against Dell. He has hired away several of its top Asia-Pacific executives, as Dell struggled internationally, and used the channel to push into some Dell accounts. After FutureTech Enterprises, Holbrook, N.Y., brought Lenovo into Monumental Life Insurance, which used to engage Dell, it was able to extend its client a fourth year of warranty under Amelio's pro-channel policies. While Lenovo may be looking at a four-year refresh cycle, the move also locks in the
for an extra year. "They're definitely satisfied," FutureTech President Bob Venero says. "Now they're looking for a four-year
cycle vs. three for Dell."
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So add two more places where Amelio has been: the direct channel and the indirect channel. And right now, with his reputation on the line, he's planted his stake in the latter.