Distributing Service

Published for the Week Of July 19, 2004

ow often should a company president call on a customer? If you are David Bollig, president and CEO of Northern Computer Technologies, the answer is every time they have a problem or complaint.

Bollig makes it a point to personally address every customer complaint to ensure its resolved successfully. Youve got to be able to provide better service than anyone else, he said.

That was something he learned as an account executive at Globelle, a would-be national distributor that succumbed to consolidation pressures in the late 1990s. After its acquisition by SED International, Bollig left to found his own distribution company, better known as Nor-Tech, Burnsville, Minn.

Since then, Bollig and co-founder and Vice President Jeff Olson have steered the company from being primarily a components distributor to a custom-system builder for the VAR channel. Last year, between 60 percent and 70 percent of Nor-Techs $27 million in sales came from building systems, including desktops, servers, notebooks and storage appliances.

As he kicked the companys system building activity into high gear, Nor-Techs average monthly build rate jumped 73 percent to 3,550 units a month while revenue climbed a more modest 13 percent.

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Although Nor-Tech sells most systems under its Voyageur brand, it also provides custom labels to larger customers. We call the systems we build snowflakesits very rare that we sell two systems that are exactly the same, Bollig said.

While Nor-Techs focus on servicing the VAR channel is one key to its growth, another is an internal team dedicated to researching market trends and seeking out opportunities in vertical markets and technology areas such as convergence, according to Todd Swank, director of marketing. They allow us to offer forward-thinking technology to our customers and our customers customers, Swank said.

This research led Nor-Tech to enter the whitebook arena, where unit sales increased fourfold last year to an average 200 units per month. As with other system builders, Nor-Tech also found government and education to be good markets last year, Swank said.