Avnet UK chief eyes growth
Miriam Murphy, who took over the Avnet UK hotseat this summer, is in a buoyant mood as she nears completion of her first quarter in the role
Avnet’s new UK chief is earmarking security as a major expansion area for the distribution giant in the coming year.
Miriam Murphy, who has worked at the distributor for more than 15 years in various roles, took over the UK reins from Sukh Rayat, who has moved to a European role, in June this year.
Speaking to CRN two and a half months into the role, Murphy said she was enjoying getting to know the partners and staff, and was seeing investment paying off already.
“One of the things I’m most excited about is that the growth initiatives we have launched are starting to bear fruit for us, and we are investing in areas where we see the biggest opportunities,” she said.
She added that the recent RSA contract win in the UK was also a boost for the distributor’s fast-growing security division.
“We have rebranded the security and networking division so that security is more dominant,” she said. “We now work with Cisco from a security perspective after we went to them with an interesting opportunity. You will see more effort being put into security as a growth area for us, along with converged infrastructure.”
In terms of security, Murphy (pictured) said the growth would be mainly organic, but hinted that the company would "never rule out" acquisition if it was the right move. She added that Avnet had undergone some restructuring over the last quarter to ensure teams were more customer aligned.
“We have still kept some dedicated teams, but have customer-aligned people focused on share of wallet across the portfolio. Already we have seen a couple of really great customer successes as a result.”
Other areas of strength for Avnet at the moment, Murphy said, were big data and analytics and the constant push to services.
“We continue to invest heavily in services, and we are seeing considerable growth in our services business. Services are underpinning everything we do – we are about driving incremental revenue and profit for our partners and giving them something compelling as differentiation. Our services continue to be increasingly important in terms of the overall sell.
“Because of the investment we have made in technology and resources here and across EMEA, new vendors are coming to us now and talking to us about it and they want to work with us.”
Murphy said the strength of the management team had made her first few weeks in the role a lot easier than expected.
“When I came into this role, I was really lucky to have inherited a phenomenal management team. We have a great team here. I am getting to know the people at a different level and it has left me even more optimistic than when I first came in. The UK is our second-largest market for Avnet TS globally and we need to make sure we are getting it right. I am not someone who is ever phased by change and I love being back in the thick of it.”