D-Link: Reorg To Focus On Best Practices
The initiative, which started in earnest two years ago, D-Link said, is an opportunity for the Fountain Valley, Calif.-based company to prepare for the eventual market upturn while adopting the best practices of each separate geography and wrapping them into one framework.
"For us, it was an opportunity before the market turns to get our ducks in a row," said Nick Tidd, D-Link's new vice president of sales for Pan America and vice president of marketing for North America.
Amid the reorganization, D-Link has phased out two of its top executives, letting go of Steven Joe, CEO and president of D-Link Systems, and Keith Karlsen, executive vice president and U.S. channel chief. In their place, D-Link has appointed Carlos Casassus Fontecilla, a 10-year D-Link veteran who formerly served as head of Latin America, as president of Pan America. Meanwhile, Tidd, who for the past nine months has held the role of vice president of North American channel development, will serve as vice president of sales for Pan America and vice president of marketing for North America.
In his new role, Tidd will head up D-Link Systems' entire sales operations, focusing on its broadband, consumer and enterprise segments.
According to Tidd, D-Link was plagued by duplication between its global business units. There were three tech support teams, three logistics teams, three supply chain teams and the list goes on. Tidd said the company wouldn't have been able to sustain itself if it continued with three individual operations. Instead, its goal is to focus on synergy and build a single business unit that will collapse the best parts of the three geographies into one.
For partners, tightening up and streamlining the organization will let D-Link focus on marketing and to get more aggressive in targeting small, medium and large enterprise customers, Tidd said. It also gives D-Link the ability to better respond to partner needs.
"They are going to see a much more aggressive and a much more agile company than they have in the past," he said, adding that resellers will be better armed to take D-Link's value proposition to customers. "This is a very exciting opportunity for partners to consider D-Link."
Tidd said D-Link is consolidating "where it makes sense," which will free up funding for marketing campaigns, which will trickle down into increased sales. Those increased sales, he said, will benefit D-Link's partner base, as 100 percent of the company's revenue comes through the channel.
On the programmatic side, Tidd said the consolidation will create a similar channel framework to deliver information to partners, but that architecture will still have localized elements that differentiate it by region.
"You can't treat a partner in Brazil the same as a partner in Canada," he said.
So far, partners are on the fence about the restructuring at D-Link. One D-Link reseller, who asked his name not be used, said the reorganization sounds like a cost-saving maneuver and it's too soon to tell exactly where resellers will benefit.
"I want them to explain to me how it's going to help me," he said. "I don't see a clear path yet."