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23 Feb 2009
Bell Micro is working hard to put its financial restatement woes behind it and is focusing on the future, according to global distribution president Graeme Watt.
Speaking to CRN, Watt said the firm's own internal investigation had now finished and the distributor is looking to complete its 2007 to 2008 accounts quickly.
“We expect that to be done by the third quarter,” said Watt. “Our goal is to put the whole investigation behind us and get relisted as soon as possible. It has soaked up a lot of time, energy and money.
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“But it is a testament to the people at Bell and to the value that we are adding in the channel that people have stuck with us.”
Watt admitted the distributor has made cost reductions already this year, which has resulted in a number of job losses, but was unable to go into detail. “We have reduced costs across the whole company by about 15 per cent,” he said.
“The only good thing about a downturn is that it makes you look at and evaluate the whole business. There are no sacred cows.”
Watt added that the distributor’s focus will be on driving core vendor growth. “We have to make sure we are maintaining market share for those vendors. We are also letting some vendors go because we cannot focus effectively enough on them.”
He added that storage and security have been very robust in terms of performance, as has the firm’s software and assisted build integration business.
Alastair Edwards, senior analyst at Canalys, said: “Bell has obviously been through a difficult time, but the reality is that times are tough for all distributors. However, it has a strong management team behind it and great global reach.
“Bell also has strong brand equity and is evidently adding value to its resellers, which is particularly important at a time when a lot of distributors are moving down the commoditised route.”
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