WESTCONGROUP

Case in Point

IT group by Samantha Barnes

Accolades for

So what does a company need to do in order to be positioned as one of Southern Africa’s biggest value-added distributors of technology and converged communications solutions? We talk to WestconGroup Southern Africa’s top female leadership to unravel the mechanics behind the company’s success. We discuss how recent investments have given the group a further foothold in geographies in Africa. The company has an ethos of “value-added” services. This, and their high performance culture are among the reasons for WestconGroup’s success.

aplenty

WESTCONGROUP

Case in Point

Chief Operating OfficerElmien du Toit

Pulling all the pieces together is the best way to describe Elmien du Toit’s role as chief operating officer at WestconGroup Southern Africa. Elmien and her team create the glue that holds operations together. Their ‘to do’ list is comprehensive: from

ensuring that there are enough operational people to service the business practices, to making sure that the various teams have the right systems and processes to meet client demands, to working with the executive team to help foster the right culture and environment.

Recent investments have yielded handsome returns. “The acquisition of Comztek has given WestconGroup a further foothold in geographies and customer and vendor base in

HR DirectorRobyn Newel

Speaking to the executive female leadership of WestconGroup Southern Africa has exposed a single golden thread – people are what make the business, teams are what drive its success, and it is a company where staff are its most valuable asset.

“One word in my view describes Westcon Southern Africa and that is: Dynamic,” says Robyn Newel, Westcon HR director. When Robyn joined Westcon two years ago she set about preparing the hearts and minds of the people for any po-tential business impact that would be felt from its merger with Comztek, while also managing the post integration process. The merger was in HR terms a great success as the cultures of both companies melded into one. Today, together with the WestconGroup leadership and HR teams, Robyn continues to drive what is deemed a high performance culture.

To this end, WestconGroup and its stakeholders ‘invest significantly’ in attracting top talent. “One of our key strategic

Marketing DirectorBridget Nkuna

Bridget Nkuna joined WestconGroup Southern Africa earlier this year as marketing director. “I am really enjoying the energy, the people, the dis-cipline and the business ethos of the company,” says Bridget. She has approached her role with a

combination of humility and confidence. “It is never my intention to walk in and change things, set

new goals and force the people around me to deliver on what I deem to be right. I wanted to first understand the mechan-ics of the business and see how I could help the marketing team to work smarter, ensuring that they have the right tools to do their jobs effectively, and in that, unearth new ways of driving value to all of our stakeholders – be these our staff, executive, shareholders, resellers or vendors,” says Bridget.

WESTCONGROUP

Case in Point

Africa where we previously didn’t have a presence,” says Elmien. “It has enabled us to grow our product portfolio to over 50 vendors, and this has positioned us as one of the big-gest value-added distributors in the Southern Africa region.”

Other steps taken by the company include facilitating continued growth; namely continued investment in new staff and the on-boarding of new vendors to remain current in the ever changing IT industry.

WestconGroup prides itself on being a good “corporate citizen”. Something that is evidenced in its myriad CSI projects as well as in how it ensures compliance in all aspects of its business. The company, through its BEE sharehold-ing, held by the Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC),

are serious about transformation. Other areas where the business drives transformation include: employment equity; affirmative procurement and enterprise development.

The success of the IT distribution company is underpinned by how its logistics and supply chain is aligned with the supply and demand generated from customers. The stakes are high as are the challenges. “We are all only as strong as our weakest link – we cannot afford any weak links in our business,” says Elmien. “So it is that continual strive for consistency, perfection and excellence in all that we do.”

As WestconGroup Southern Africa is part of a global business, there is a strong emphasis on compliance and gov-ernance and best practices.

attractions is being not only a Distributor of Choice but an Employer of Choice,” confirms Robyn. “Succession management and retention management strategies focus on rewarding and retaining our key top talent.”

Westcon is mindful that technical and sales staff need con-stant upskilling and certification. “This is achieved through the implementation of a skills matrix that identifies individ-ual needs and tracks the execution of training interventions,” says Robyn. One way is by attending international technol-ogy events for example HR manager Suzannah Bligh, attends programmes in the UK equipping her with the latest leading HR technology best practices. While, security channel man-ager Rory Vorster recently attended the F5 Agility conference in Edinburgh, confirming this as a fantastic opportunity to engage with peers and senior executives of leading brands.

Being registered with relevant professional bodies empowers individuals to keep abreast of ‘what’s truly

happening’ in their areas of expertise. “This knowledge acquisition increases the level of skill for individuals and contributes to the mitigation of risk within our business,” explains Robyn.

Westcon plays a significant role in increasing the pool of IT professionals in the sector, and has partnership relation-ships with Torque IT and MICTSETA; Microsoft and Woman in IT. Robyn and her team are succeeding in contributing to the broader strategies of WestconGroup.

The common thread communicated by Westcon staff is how much they enjoy the company culture. “We continu-ously work on and instil in our staff the values of family, fun, compliance, honesty and integrity. This enables people to consistently perform at their best,” says Robyn. Work life balance programmes address total employee wellbeing; an important consideration in a fast paced, ever changing sector like IT.

“At WestconGroup we deem ourselves to be a ‘value-added distributor’. We are the first port of call for resellers of consumer and enterprise IT equipment to source their products. This is not something we simply want to pay lip service to. Marketing forms a key part of this service promise and our team acts as an extension of the entire business. We provide support to resellers and customers where for instance marketing skills or departments don’t exist.”

WestconGroup was named F5’s Europe and Middle East and Africa Distributor of the year. Bridget emphasizes that awards in the IT industry are not simply dished out to those with the best relationships: they are awarded based on sales, support, skills, teams in place and even market-ing a brand.

Working within the IT industry is special. “You are right at the forefront of innovation at all times which is incredible. There is most certainly the people aspect – I have a team of Westcon warriors around me, frommarketing and events specialists to digital strategists,creative designers and communications leads – all workingtogether for a single goal.”

Bridget appreciates being part of something bigger than herself that extends beyond South Africa. The new WestconGroup building in Midrand, Johannesburg has been awarded the best commercial building by SAPOA.

This is an environment which encourages a work life balance, as well as improving logistics to clients: a winning combination all-round!

WESTCONGROUP

Case in Point

Comstor DirectorLouise Taute

Louise Taute enjoys working for the Westcon Group and after leaving the company, “for a mere six months,” returned as she was “drawn to the culture of the company.”

She describes it as a high performance environment within a family type culture. Louise believes that this culture is among the reasons that people tend to stay with the company for a long time.

She is Comstor Southern Africa Director. For people less familiar with the IT industry, Comstor Southern Africa consists of two divisions, namely the Cisco centric business that covers all of the Cisco architectures excluding Cisco Data Centre. The other division, the Data Centre business,

Cloud Solutions DirectorLeane Hannigan

When someone works within an industry just made for them, you can feel it. Leane Hannigan is one of those people. She is cloud solutions director at WestconGroup. Her days are packed

with activity and she wouldn’t have it any other way. “Every week I seem to hit the ground running, but

I love it,” says Leane. “From driving this profitable business machine, through to ensuring we are on the right trajectory from strategy, aligning to WestconGroup glob-ally, being available to our sales people, enabling our cus-tomers and, most importantly, working with my team and promoting their individual success. It’s a roller coaster and I adore it.”

WESTCONGROUP

Case in Point

includes leading data centre solutions and technologies that are supported by global vendors such as Cisco, Netapp, Panduit, Simplivity, VMware, Veeam and Oracle.

Under Louise’s leadership the Comstar team is achiev-ing great results as the first distributor in the region that is accredited with all Cisco architectures. The team made it happen. “We prioritised our business goals and go-to-market strategies, formulated an action plan, assigned people and timelines to these set priorities and ensured we executed as planned.” says Louise

Louise is delighted that in the past two years her team has grown and surpassed many of their vendor’s expec-tations. This has acted as a catalyst to growing Comstor

business throughout the region. It helps that Comstor has a competitive advantage in EDGE. “This is a programmatic approach where we partner with resellers to enable them, and ourselves, to accelerate the business in a methodical manner,” explains Louise.

Any successful business has to adapt in the face of change. The adoption of cloud computing poses challenges as well as opportunities in the market. WestconGroup embraced this challenge by acquiring its own global cloud offering which will enable resellers to offer and expand their own cloud solutions. Louise finds the ever changing ICT industry rewarding and believes that forming the right partnership can determine the success of a business.

She was with Microsoft for 10 years, initially in its Dublin office (her husband is Irish). After returning to South Africa with her family, she managed the Microsoft South Africa professional services division. Before joining WestconGroup Southern Africa, Leane handled distribution for Microsoft in South Africa.

Leane loves the innovative, constantly changing nature of the cloud. It is particularly beneficial for small business; enabling efficiencies and benefits that are required today. “Cloud is not a new phenomenon. Vendors like Microsoft have been living and breathing cloud for years, resellers and business not so much,” explains Leane.

“Suddenly we are seeing awesome products that repre-sent cloud come to market and to some extent businesses

and resellers have lagged in this journey. They simply aren’t geared to adequately sell, service and grow anything to do with cloud.”

This is where WestconGroup steps in: offering all the products and services that starting a cloud journey entails. “Watch this space; we are about to launch something that will bring everybody up to speed on the cloud journey and observe how this accelerates through the market,” says Leane.

With Internet banking, consumers started seeing the true benefits of technology, which triggered the popularity of cloud. Consumers were experiencing ‘wow’ moments and the efficien-cy of not needing to go to a bank anymore. “That’s the cloud – that’s the same wow factor that the cloud brings to business – it is no wonder it’s popular,“ explains Leane. “It just works.”