Tech Data Kicks Off TechEdg Conference, Pushes Contract Support

Tech Data's TechEdg conference kicked of Tuesday afternoon, bringing together 100 resellers and 40 vendors that target the government and education market for learning and networking opportunities.

The event, now in its third year, celebrates a year of growth for the distributor. While Tech Data doesn't break out revenues by vertical, its public-sector business grew twice as much as commercial, said Barb Miller, vice president of government and technical and integration services.

Also doubling from last year is the number of certified small disadvantaged businesses in attendance at TechEdg.

"Our focus swings back and forth as the year goes on," Miller said. "We may work on a very large RFP for two months, only to find the contracts we worked on last year start to be [awarded], so then we find ourselves beating bushes of those to make sure we get the business."

In that respect, Tech Data said it made contracting support a major over the last year, evaluating contract opportunities, farming out product and service components to technical engineers, and presenting a competitive bid to qualified resellers.

"We stay hands-off, third party, when it comes to opportunities we present our resellers," Miller says. "It's hard enough for them. We don't sell direct. We don't put our name on the contract...biting off pieces [of the opportunities]."

Tech Data reported net sales of $21.4 billion in fiscal year 2006, a year-over-year increase of 4.7 percent. Net sales in the Americas represented 46 percent of net sales, growing 5.3 percent in 2006 to $9.9 billion. Europe represented 54 percent of net sales and increased 4.1 percent to $11.5 billion.