Brown to focus on vendor-reseller unity in new Exertis role
Phil Brown said new position as sales and commercial director for IT will see more alignment between reseller and vendors divisions
Exertis has bumped up Phil Brown to be its new sales and commercial director for IT, as the distributor looks to create more alignment between its reseller and vendor divisions.
Brown, who was previously B2B sales director, will now be in charge of resellers and vendors for the B2B and VAD Solutions divisions.
"My [new] role, primarily dealing with B2B vendors and working with the channel, is to bring those areas closer together," he told CRN. "This gives the reseller guys a much better view of what they are doing and makes sure the message of what our vendors want is aligned to the markets we take it to."
He said the commercial division, which concentrates on the vendors, and the sales division, focused on the resellers, are going to be brought "under one direction, which means we can align our vendor strategy to the customer [reseller] strategy".
Brown's promotion follows a restructure that saw the appointment of Sarah Potter last week to head up the networking arm, as Exertis looks to push more enterprise business by offering more services.
Brown added that his new position will see more of this enterprise focus, as Exertis looks to provide more crossover with the VAD Solutions business - formerly Cohort Technology.
"With the VAD business coming closer, we are exploring our enterprise opportunity," he said. "Sarah Potter was in the press talking about the networking business, and you'll see a development of that. It gives us a huge opportunity with our existing portfolio, but we will be looking at new technology and new opportunity we can take to market.
"Our services business sits under our VAD Solutions area, and we want to build on our services and understand how we can bring services out to a wider customer base," he said. "We have a large services operation with a number of vendors and I think there is opportunity to broaden the vendors we work with and the customers we offer it to."
Two weeks ago, the erstwhile managing director of VAD Solutions, Grahame Smee, left the firm, and Brown said his new position means he is now leading the VAD Solutions business, which is now part of his remit.
When asked if anyone has been found to replace Brown's previous position, he said "there will be announcements coming out in the weeks and months ahead, but [I have] nothing to say on that at the moment".
Paul Bryan, Exertis UK's managing director, said: "Phil [Brown] has already demonstrated his skills and attributes in the course of his previous roles with us and I am confident he will build on this in his new role. This is an important next step in our evolution as we enhance our focus in the market."