Tech Data Americas President Quaglia On The Avnet Integration, Accelerating Investments In Next-Gen Technologies, Going On The 'Offensive' And Why The New Tech Data Is Just 'Getting Started'

Going On The Offensive

Tech Data Americas President Joe Quaglia says now that the distributor has integrated its $2.6 billion acquisition of Avnet Technology Solutions the focus is on going on the offensive.

"If you think about where we are now it is about capitalizing on that integration to start to put ourselves on the offensive side of the business," said Quaglia in an interview with CRN. "That is figuring out how to accelerate growth and next generation support to our partners and of course our vendors who want us to go capture that one plus one is something greater than two."

Quaglia says partners can expect the new Tech Data to accelerate investments in next generation technologies like cloud, big data analytics and security.

"We want to accelerate the selling motion to meet the wide capability of needs in the market from security analytics to cloud based solutions and architectures," he said. "We are going to continue to enhance this portfolio. We still believe there is lots of opportunity in our end to end portfolio to optimize and to continue to find areas of growth."

How far have you come with the integration of Avnet Technology Solutions within Tech Data?

We have made a lot of good progress over the last nine months. What we set out to do from the beginning is make sure the focus was on minimal disruption for customers and vendors. They give us a grade of 100 on that.

From day one we said we were going to create two tracks. We created a track that was all about integration – a small group of people focused on helping the company integrate the two organizations.

The majority of the organization was on the RTB (Run The Business) side of the house. Our ability to do that and stay consistent with that served us really well in the first 11 months of the acquisition.

We also said we were going to hold our customer relationships and organization consistent and without disruption. We have held very true to that. If a customer yesterday was led and managed and serviced by a certain representative they would have that in today's world. We were very true to ensuring that customer and vendor connection was going to receive the same, if not better service, than what they had before.

From a customer, vendor and integration and run the business perspective we accomplished quite a bit in a very short period of time.

What does the new fiscal year look like in terms of investments that the company is making?

We have positioned Tech Data with an end to end portfolio. We are going to continue to strengthen the portfolio which means we are going to continue to get stronger and deeper on the end point business and continue to get stronger and deeper on the advanced solutions business.

On top of that we are also going to accelerate the investments we are making in the third platform or next generation technologies like cloud and analytics and security.

What is the Tech Data strategy going forward now that Avnet has been integrated into the company?

Our strategy is to strengthen the end to end portfolio. We believe that is a differentiator for us in the market because solutions are being developed and purchased now versus point products. As the lines blur between technologies you really have to be an end to end player.

Our partners are asking us to help them develop practices around security and cloud and analytics. We will continue to invest in those technologies and the skills required to help our partners go deeper into those technologies. Whether you are an enterprise class customer that traditionally came from the (Avnet) Technology Solutions business or an advanced solutions customer coming from the traditional Tech Data business, all of them are looking for ways in which to expand and enrich their portfolios and their skill sets to deliver solutions to their end customers. We are going to continue to focus on that as we go forward.

How did you structure the specializations in specific market segments like security and cloud from Technology Solutions and Tech Data?

What we did really, really quickly is when we put the specializations of the two businesses together we realized we had to put them into a specific organization. Not only did we have to blend the specializations like our security practices, analytics practices and cloud practices, we put all of those together into a single organization so they can serve the end to end customers much better than if they were in two different silohs and two different organizations.

What is the focus now that the integration is essentially completed?

If you think about where we are now it is about capitalizing on that integration to start to put our selves on the offensive side of the business. That is figuring out how to accelerate growth and next generation support to our partners and of course our vendors who want us to go capture that one plus one is something greater than two.

What kind of VAR and vendor retention have you experienced in the wake of the integration?

The most important dimension of the integration was what were our wins and losses and what does our market share look like. I am here to tell you we are putting up more Ws (wins) than Ls (losses). The market share is very strong. For us it is all about making sure that we can continue to accelerate the wins.

We are just as humble as the next person. We know we have to go fight for it everyday. We are not getting too big for our britches, but we do believe this is a compelling value proposition. The market has told us that. Make no mistake about it, we still have a lot of work to do. But I am very happy and very pleased with the lack of disruption and the fact that we are winning. I think we are just getting started.

What is the road map as you look at acceleration into the new fiscal year?

We are in the process right now of completing our annual operating plans and where we are going to make the investments. We want to accelerate the selling motion to meet the wide capability of needs in the market from security and analytics to cloud based solutions and architectures. We are going to continue to enhance this portfolio. We still believe there is lots of opportunity in our end to end portfolio to optimize and to continue to find areas of growth.

We are seeing really a whole different perspective from the vendor community now in the way that they perceive and look at and engage and build plans and programs with Tech Data.