CRN Sales & Marketing Awards - Finalist Q&A with David Watts, senior vice president and managing director, UK & Ireland, TD SYNNEX

David Watts talks being a finalist at this year's CRN Sales & Marketing Awards

What prompted you to enter the Sales and Marketing Awards this year?

Quite simply, we believe that the incredible curiosity, creativity, innovation, and effort that our marketing team has made to our business is worthy of recognition. They are a great team, doing an amazing job for us and for our partners.

What would winning this award mean to both your people and your customers/partners?

Our co-workers are what makes us successful. It’s important for every individual to know that they are part of the team, that they are making a difference and helping us to deliver the best possible personal experience to all our partners. For them, the award would be a recognition of the valued contributions they make, both individually and collectively. For our vendor and customer partners, it would provide an industry-recognised endorsement of the uncompromising approach we take to delivering results for them and making sure we always put the customer first.

What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?

I’m extremely pleased and proud of the progress that we’ve been making against our strategy, and the enduring strength of our culture. This has supported and sustained the growth of our business across all areas, and particularly SMB, over the past few months as our greatest success.

What have been the biggest challenges of the current year so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people/partners helped with that?

The economic instability and uncertainty brought about by geopolitical events and the impact that has on customer confidence and the supply chain. We have taken a positive and measured approach. We’ve adapted where that’s been necessary and continued to advance on our own strategic goals. We have been providing stability – financially and by having the foresight to forward plan and schedule advanced orders to supply from our vendor partners. That’s paid off for us and most importantly, for our partners. One key area that I think has helped us to really stay focused on what we are trying to achieve, is Making IT Personal. This is a rolling campaign through which we focus on tailoring our services, improving every partner engagement, and every aspect of the customer experience. As part of that we have been using AI to personalise communications, drawing together and analysing huge quantities of customer and market data and seeing excellent results.

What lessons do you think the industry has learned over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

My personal view is that we are, as an industry and a channel, becoming much more measured, mature, and strategic in our approach. We know that we need each other more than ever, that there is no single business that can do it all. We are all still learning about the complexities of the cloud, cybersecurity, and AI and those technologies and others are also constantly changing. We need to build partnerships and work together if we are going to deliver the best solutions for end- user customers. We are also more focused on how we get there – on doing the right things for our co-workers, for people, and for the planet. We are committed to our values and our principles and with that comes greater self-esteem, credibility, and trust.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming 12 months? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

We will continue to be an enabler and aggregator for technology for our partners, and to take a positive and values-driven approach to supporting them in growing their businesses, driving profitability, keeping costs down, and delivering customer satisfaction. Looking at specific technologies, the cloud and cybersecurity continue to be big areas of focus and growth potential for us, and we are just starting to see the early potential of AI. We’ve made huge investments in our Destination AI programme and we’re providing resources that will enable partners to move from awareness through to the actual development and delivery of AI-driven solutions.

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