Avnet UK boss: We are capturing emerging players

Nearly a year into the job, Miriam Murphy explains how the distribution giant is reaping the rewards of its strategy change

Avnet’s UK boss has hailed the distributor’s transformation story a success as it enjoys the fruits of its ambitious three-pronged strategy.

Miriam Murphy, who took over the UK hotseat last summer, said the firm’s gamble on where to invest had paid off.

"We started our transformation a few years ago focusing on three areas: the third platform, converged practice, and becoming more customer-centric. It has been a great year so far for me and the team," she said.

Murphy explained that the third platform centers around the Internet of Things (IoT), which Avnet sees as a huge opportunity. In terms of convergence, she explained that Avnet had created centres of excellence around converged technology such as security and cloud, to focus on the education and enablement of the channel.

"We also made sure our portfolio was aligned," she explained, "and we added more solutions to help us tap into the security field and the convergence market as a whole with existing suppliers."

The third prong was to become more customer-centric, Murphy said.

"We are looking at accounts holistically, where customers have one account across the whole portfolio, and we have set up segmented teams. We have partners out there that are growing rapidly and need a different approach to others," she explained.

Murphy added that Avnet is seeing an uptick in the amount of ISV business, as well as growing business through system integrators and MSPs.

"The opportunity around ISVs is becoming more important. We are working to partner them with other partners or access end users to allow them to come up with new technology to support IoT. We are here to maximise our profit and that of our partners.

"We want to capture new and emerging players – ISVs, MSPs and SIs are getting more and more share, in fact IDC quotes that in the next few years these players will account for 65 per cent of the channel. We are actively looking at new players and looking at how some players are emerging as native to the third platform."

She added that cloud was also a huge part of Avnet’s business.

"It is integrated into everything we do. We see cloud as another route to market and we are investing in the tools that enable us to support partners better, along with offering multi-vendor cloud solutions and aggregating them for our partners to open up opportunities."

However, the traditional role of distribution is still important, Murphy stressed, adding that Avnet was set to announce a new strategy which allows partners to outsource their credit risk.

"We take on the billing and collection capabilities on behalf of the partner, but this is not disclosed to the end user," she said. "This allows our partners to focus on where to take a risk and place their investments. It has been very successful in the US, and is set to roll out in the UK. It is an example of where we are being quite innovative in our approach."

She also said the firm would continue to look at acquisition targets if they "helped to enhance and accelerate [Avnet’s] strategic imperatives".

When asked about the changing nature of distribution, Murphy said a distributor’s value was determined by how it evolves.

"We identified areas of growth, and targeted our services to develop these areas of growth, and servicing our partner base, both supplier and customer to optimise these. From our perspective, the investments we have made in converged, security and cloud are paying off and it is where we are having the most impact. You don’t always place your bets and they continue to accelerate the way ours are, so it is a very positive place to be."