CDW Canada has built a training academy where university graduates learn industry experience during a six week program.
CDW Canada’s state of the art classroom can handle between 30 and 38 people inside its Toronto offices. The company plans to hire 100 new people this year because of company and market growth, said Mary Ann Yule, its director of marketing and purchasing.
The company’s belief is that the small- to- medium enterprises in Canada are challenged by limited IT budgets and sparse IT department who may or may not have the skill sets to run a computing operation properly. By developing new people for this market, CDW Canada can position itself as a trusted advisor to SMEs.
Yule pegs the SME addressable market as 200,000 accounts in Canada. The market is worth $10 billion and growing at 25 per cent. The company will only work with organizations with 20 to 499 employees. Each customer will have a dedicated account manager that will have a back up along with 170 IT specialists trained in wireless, mobility, security, power, software licensing and storage.
“Organizations do not have a sense of urgency, and we put the customer first with a vender neutral offering. It is the right technology; right away and we have a large pool of inventory,” she said.
That inventory does not include Dell, but it does have practically everything else. CDW Canada has partnerships with 350 vendors and have the capability of offering more than 160,000 products.
This kind of product inventory necessitated the training academy. Sarah Broderick, account manager at CDW Canada, was the first graduate from the academy. The University of Laurier honours graduate said working for a company that is agile, has a small business feel but is backed up by a large organization appealed to her.
She is now in the manager in training program, but her day job keeps her busy with several clients in need of new products, tech support, quotes or help with manufacturers.
“It is more of a personalized touch,” she said. As an account manager as soon has she swipes her passcard to enter the building her customers know that she is in the office and available via phone or e-mail from the CDW Web site.
Another priority for CDW Canada is building more partnerships with resellers.
“This is an evolution,” Yule said. “We need to build up this base. We are an end-to-end designer, but we need to have a third-party organization to go out and install it,” she said.
Currently, solution providers such as LegendCorp., IT Mission and Decision One are among the company’s partners, but more are required. She will also try to leverage CDW’s U.S. parent for more cross-border partnerships.
However, there are no plans to bring Berbee Information Networks, the Madison, Wis. strategic VAR, CDW acquired in October of last year, which is a leader in enterprise services, into Canada.
Yule stated that they are working closely with CDW U.S. on the integration of Berbee, but have not engaged them in any way about the Canadian operation. No timetable has been set for those talks.