Configuration centre, solution focus help Synnex NZ maintain growth

A focus on solution sales and the addition of a new configuration centre for pre-staging is helping Synnex New Zealand enjoy consecutive double digit revenue growth.

Kee Ong, Synnex Australia and New Zealand chief executive, says the Kiwi business has had a strong year again and is doing well.

"This year has been pretty strong for them again, so I'm pretty happy with that," Ong says.

He says the growth is coming across the board.

"We don't seem to have a particular area where it is standout. It's across the board and very solid in terms of product offerings and services.

"We're winning a lot of business based on our service that is very efficient, and also our operations. Those basic fundamentals of doing business right.

Ong says its getting hard to get specific products with the 'wow' factor at the moment.

"I think it probably time to move away from products and talk about solutions, rather than product offerings.

"Products can do so much but it is difficult to stay on positive growth year on year if you just focus on selling the product. You have to do something over and above just selling the product or box shipping," Ong says.

"I think we have done well on supply chain management, looking at forecasting and also trying to put different products together to become solutions and also enabling our customers to put things together.

"You have to look deeper and and go down into what you're selling at this moment and whether you can cross different product segments and offer a total solution.

"It's about embedding those things into your selling mode, rather than just talking about product specs.

While he admits the move to solution selling isn't new he says 'it is hard to execute that'.

Ong says digital transformation is one area of hot demand for solution sells.

"You need to that to have a modern workplace or modern business. You can't just stay on the legacy or traditional way as it's not efficient, even marketing wise – people are looking to digital transformation to new digital marketing.

"But also in the physical world you're trying to look at total product lifecycle from pre-staging to deployment and decommissioning. And in the middle people talk about managed services," Ong says.

He says its difficult for anyone to provide an end-to-end digital transformation offering.

"You just have to chose which area you have competence and can do well.

For Synnex New Zealand, that has seen the establishment of a configuration centre at the distributor's new Auckland premises.

"We established the configuration centre so they're able to do configuration work for our resellers, doing pre-staging and imaging and all those services, even involving building the whole system including server.

"It's a new area for New Zealand operations to slowly transform themselves," Ong says.

Synnex's Melbourne team has been working with the local operations to 'pass on their knowledge', he says.

The configuration centre is part of Synnex's new premises, which are three times larger than the previous facility.

"The new building has good space for them to start to ramp up that service," Ong says.

Meanwhile, work on the New Zealand version of the distributor's cloud automation platform continues, however the platform won't be launching here this year.

The platform – with the addition of at least 10 new vendors for Synnex's Kiwi resellers – was initially expected to have debuted here late this year, with transactions beginning early in the New Year.

"We're trying to plan for next year, hopefully in the first half of the year," Ong now says.

However, he says timeframes are subject to the portal migration and hiring, with the distributor still struggling to find enough skilled staff to understand and handle the cloud business.