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GTSI Names New COO And President
4:28 PM EST Wed. Nov. 28, 2007
Friedlander has been at GTSI nearly seven years, joining the reseller in 2001 after a 19-year career with Xerox. In his most recent position with Xerox, he was responsible for the company's public sector operations for the North America Solutions Group.
"I came to GTSI to move it to the enterprise," Friedlander said, "and through some turbulance and a lot of change, it's been really exciting these last two years, really sensational."
Friedlander's near-term goal is to continue the transformation he helped start nearly two years ago. The company has emerged from some turbulent financial times, and recently capped 12 consecutive months of growth.
Key to GTSI's success is the three-pronged approach it embarked on. The first prong is its human capital plan.
"We've started moving from a 'job' company to a 'career company," Friedlander said. Today, he noted, many more employees are three, five, 10, 15 and even 20 year veterans of GTSI.
Second is the continuing evolution of the company to provide enterprise solutions and services. "I am proud to say that we saw triple-digit growth in services this year, including project and program management," Friedlander said.
Third, is the legacy business, the small-order initiative and moving to a more touchless Web-based approach. Friedlander said his goal is improving each of those areas and maturing them. "We'll continue to focus on our large, program-level effort and [as well as] on professional, financial and staff augmentation services," he said.
Much of GTSI's transformation has involved employee training. In fact, Friedlander said the solution provider has spent $1 million annually during the past three years helping employees attain education and certifications.
"In 2005, 2006, we were in survival mode," Friedlander said. "Now, we are in growth mode, transformation. All the pain we went through. It's like after a big storm and now the rainbow is out, that's how I feel."
Friedlander will add operations and the Information Technology Department to his current responsibilities, which include overseeing all of GTSI sales, marketing, financial services, solutions engineering, and bids and proposals.
