8 Moves That Put PCM On The Fast-Growth Track

Transitional Period For PCM

Over the last year, PCM - No. 29 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list - has drastically shaken up its entire organization with a number of acquisitions, a re-organization of its corporate structure and the appointments of seven new executives.

On Wednesday, the El Segundo, Calif.-based company continued its investment into its new, high-growth transformation roadmap with a $14 million acquisition of Systemax's North American business-to-business assets, including its TigerDirect brand.

PCM President Jay Miley orchestrated the reorganization after he took over leadership of the company in November 2014. All of PCM's movements over the last 12 months have focused on transforming the company into what he called "an undisputed leading solutions and services provider."

That has paid off in its financial performance this year. Through the first three quarters of 2015, PCM reaped $1.18 billion in revenue, 18 percent higher than what it took in during the first three quarters of 2014.

As the company pushes ahead with its re-organization, digesting its acquisitions and settling into a new cooperate structure, here's a look at eight changes the solution provider has undertaken in the last year.

Miley Takes Charge

Twelve months ago, Jay Miley came on board as president to oversee PCM's investment strategy in networking, security and cloud.

Miley, formerly vice president and general manager of Ingram Micro's advanced technology division, took on the responsibilities of the former sales president, Joe Hayek, who had left the company in April 2014. However, according to the company's founder, Chairman and CEO Frank Khulusi, Miley took on additional responsibilities, because Hayek was only president of the PCM/Sarcom enterprise services division while Miley was to oversee the entire company.

Months after he was hired, Miley outlined a new cooperate structure and announced the appointments of six new executives who would lead the company's new push toward expansion.

Website Redesign

Not long after Miley's arrival, PCM embarked on a massive redesign of its private- and public-sector websites, with a goal of improving the marketing of its products and services and streamlining the ordering process.

The new websites included a new directory menu, simpler navigation, enhanced product search capabilities and a blog with information on products and related market topics.

PCM said it also included a number of customized extranets that provide customers with custom catalogs and pricing as well as secure workflow to support e-procurement and invoicing.

Acquisition Of En Pointe

In April 2015, PCM acquired a huge Microsoft licensing partner, En Pointe, in a $15 million deal, the company's largest acquisition up to that point.

The deal allowed PCM to get its hands on En Pointe's customer relationship management tool, which allowed PCM to stop developing its own. Although integrating the En Pointe product cost PCM $3.3 million, the company said it expects the investment to reduce costs going forward.

During PCM's earnings call in July, President Jay Miley said PCM was working to expand En Pointe's capabilities toward other vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Dell and Apple.

PCM also said it would relocate En Pointe's workforce from its current headquarters 10 miles away in Gardena, Calif., to PCM's headquarters in El Segundo.

New Corporate Structure

Three months later, PCM reorganized its corporate structure into these three groups:

-- The Advanced Technologies Group, which includes data center, networking, security and Microsoft solutions, is led by Herb Hogue, previously senior vice president of services for En Pointe, which PCM acquired in April.

-- The Endpoint Technologies Group, which includes endpoint, mobility, digital signage, point-of-sale, print and volume-oriented business the company performs, is headed by Brian York, who had been PCM's senior vice president of services.

-- The Managed Technologies Group, which is focused on cloud and managed services, is now led by Stephen Moss, who had been president of services.

All three report directly to Miley and each has his own engineering, post-sales services delivery and vendor management teams.

Growth In Government Business

In October, PCM placed Alan Lawrence, a former vice president at Government Systems Technologies Inc., in charge of its public sector organization. He served in roles at Cisco and Hewlett-Packard for 20 years before coming to PCM.

His task? Accelerating PCM's growth in the government sector as well as its education and health-care businesses.

"Alan understands what it takes to be successful and grow in collaboration with strategic vendor partners." President Jay Miley said. "With his deep experience in government, including proven growth strategies in both the channel and OEM environments within the public sector, we expect that Alan will drive significant growth in our public sector business."

Other Executive Moves

With the many changes PCM has made over the last year, the El Segundo, Calif.-based company has made a number of other executive moves.

In July, PCM divided its commercial sales business into three organizations - corporate, medium-large and enterprise sales - placing former Zones executive Tom Ducatelli in charge of them.

Ducatelli formerly served as executive vice president of sales and business development at Zones and worked at both TechData and CompuComm.

In addition, the company hired Anne Wilcox as senior vice president of marketing. She previously worked at Zones as chief marketing officer until January 2013, and reports to President Jay Miley.

PCM also promoted Sean Mollett to the new position of senior vice president of vendor operations and Kris Rodgers from senior vice president of category marketing to senior vice president of business development.

After acquiring En Pointe, PCM also installed En Pointe's former president, Michael Rapp, as the head of PCM's software sales specialist teams.

Acrodex Acquisition

In October, PCM acquired Canadian solution provider Acrodex for $12.5 million, bolstering PCM's penetration into the Canadian small-business market.

According to a statement from PCM, the company was impressed with the management team at Acrodex - No. 92 on the CRN Solution Provider 500 list - and believed both companies shared similar go-to-market strategies.

In PCM's most recent earnings call, CEO Frank Khulusi said the company will focus on boosting Acrodex's penetration into Canada's small-to-medium-business market by establishing a call center operation north of the border.

Systemax Acquisition

This month, PCM announced it would spend another $14 million, this time to buy the North American business-to-business division of Systemax - No. 17 on the CRN Solution Provider 500 list -- including its TigerDirect brand.

Systemax said its North American B2B business generated $800 million in sales in 2014.

PCM hopes to wrap up the deal by Dec. 1. The acquisition allows PCM to hire approximately 400 Systemax sales reps across the U.S. and Canada.

PCM said the deal will significantly expand its footprint in SMB market, as well as the education and public sector verticals.

"After we absorb the costs of bringing on this sales team, we expect their performance to ramp (up) during 2016, and we expect the acquisition to contribute nicely to our revenue,’ helping add to PCM's bottom line starting in the second quarter, CEO Frank Khulusi said in a statement.