Insight Looks To Go Full Service

The $3 billion Tempe, Ariz.-based solution provider last week named Richard Fennessy, most recently the head of IBM.com's direct telesales organization, as president and CEO.

Fennessy, who will start Nov. 15, was unavailable for comment, but the IBM veteran was appointed after the board of directors conducted a lengthy search and interviewed a number of internal and external candidates, said Dino Farfante, president of Insight Direct Worldwide, a division of Insight.

Farfante said Fennessy's success in making IBM.com more profitable was one of the keys to his appointment. "Within IBM, the initiatives he drove are very similar to the transformation of where Insight is going," he said.

Farfante said he expects Fennessy to accelerate the transformation of Insight to a complete services and solutions company from a product-fulfillment company. Insight now provides a full range of services for its customers, from design and customization of a solution life cycle to services that include product installation, integration and asset disposition, Farfante said.

"Insight is focused on continuing to build our core competency of product fulfillment, adding our core competency of services—both outsourced from partners and internal capabilities where needed—and then driving the full solution to the customer," he said.

Farfante would not comment on how many services personnel Insight plans to add over the next year, saying only the company has shifted some of its resources from traditional product sales to solutions sales and delivery.

Russell Madris, president and CEO of Insight competitor MoreDirect, Boca Raton, Fla., the enterprise sales arm for PC Connection, said one of the challenges Insight faces is dealing with the fallout of shifting the responsibilities of some of its sales reps from telesales to outbound account reps.