Arrow Hires HP Veteran Pansen To Head Its HP Unit

Pansen worked closely with Arrow ECS co-president Kevin Gilroy while at HP, where Pansen was vice president of U.S. distribution sales and Gilroy was senior vice president and general manager of worldwide SMB business operations.

"Dave Pansen is a well-recognized leader in distribution. He's run distribution on the value and volume side. He has deep relationships into HP. He's a well-thought-of leader in our industry. He's one of the team members that architected PartnerOne [HP's channel program] a number of years ago," Gilroy said.

Pansen is slated to start at Arrow on Monday, Gilroy said. He will lead the unified HP unit after the merger with KeyLink Systems Group. Previously, the distributors' individual HP business units were led by Arrow's Michael Haley and KeyLink's Pete Montana. Haley has left the company. Montana plans to stay on as vice president within the HP business unit, reporting to Pansen. Gilroy declined to discuss Haley's departure.

Despite their history together at HP, Gilroy said that when he joined Arrow in December, he didn't have Pansen in mind to take over the distributor's HP business.

"I didn't come in with any preconceived notions. We did a disciplined 90-day assessment of the business and the leadership skills we need with the acqusition of KeyLink. Our HP business nearly doubles. I evaluated all the talent of all the business and felt Dave was a good leader to bring in the company," Gilroy said.

The previous business unit leaders "did a great job going from point A to point B," Gilroy said. "Our goal is to get to point C. Management transitions have happened since the beginning of time. We felt this was opportunity to bring Dave on board."

Gilroy said solution providers should not see any changes to their customer-facing Arrow representatives.

"Dave is going to run the business, but at this point in time, I don't see any changes to the sales force," he said. "He knows the sales management teams at KeyLink and Arrow. This is not a traditional entry for someone coming from the outside. Dave knows HP, and he knows the [solution provider] customers."

On the IBM side, Arrow ECS is looking to bring in a global manager for that business unit. In the meantime, Eric Williams serves as vice president of the Arrow ECS IBM group, and Mark Taylor continues to serve as vice president of the Arrow KeyLink IBM group.

"We do have a pipeline [of candidates]. Mark and Eric do a great job running North America," Gilroy said. "We've got great leadership in Europe, so we're not in a rush. We want to find the right person."

JENNIFER LAWINSKI contributed to this article.