restructuring is already happening -i was told those who collect commissions but do little are going to be shown the door-what do you know
8 replies (most recent on top)
@10z No, that's not how acquisitions work but it's clear no one at CDW has a clue how to manage an integration and now we're stuck with a mess of entitled people who never had a clear communication about what was expected of them. Fire them and bring in people who have consulting experience and no baggage about being acquired. It's a business, not your family holiday dinner party.
They do not need to layoff anyone
Their new Go to market strategy is already making top talent leave to competitors. Losing tenured reps with solid relationships with clients is not going to help grow numbers.
Should have Included sales in these decisions. People closest to the clients knew better not someone looking at a Power BI.
@jc The Sirius acquisition would have been good if executives didn't try and convert the business into the CDW Way. CDW needed to learn and adapt to Sirius's proven strategy of services sales rather than just trying to acquire Sirius's customer base.
@jc Don't forget Formula 1...very, very important sponsorship or something.
@j4 They did, as they over-hyped the potential of the Sirius acquisition. On ITS meetings and in Converge Quarterlies it was a common theme. Eccles would regularly emphasize this transformation, but he was just a messenger for the theme coming from the Executive Team. As both our internal stakeholders and customers began to seriously question the bench depth of CDW, other than on one off projects, and the phrase "full stack solutions with services" was babbled daily, with no chops behind it, things began to go south. To your point, there is a Peter Pan syndrome mindset with the current leadership that CDW will never grow up. Instead we're more concerned about Olympic sponsorships to showcase services and products we are incapable of offering to customers that don't even remotely place us in their decision reference groups for purchase/provider solution providers in these areas.
@f9 I thought you were joking but no? The execs of CDW seriously thought we'd be able to compete with Accenture & Mckinsey??? In what universe is that possible- we are a small player in a very big industry with few people that have even a base level of consulting background and no industry credibility. Where are we on Gartner's Magic Quadrant, do we get a mention - of course not. That level of delusional strategy is why we're laying off, we have nobody that seems to know what we're selling or what we want to be when we grow up.
Just sad
The thrust of effort over the last few years, via both acquisition and hiring, was to shift to services versus selling boxes, with the statement being made by A.E. that we would be a major competitor to Deloitte/Accenture That obviously didn't happen, he and other Execs are now gone as we tend to offer up 1 to 2 leaders per quarter as sacrificial offerings after numbers fail to hit target.
The legacy sales people you are referring to are in an impossible situation. We are not viable on the services front as we are not easy to do business with, and we are not competitive on the hardware front. Rudderless with a lack of vision is what CDW has become and anybody in any sales role or service development should expect major changes to roll out begining early in Q1. Expect outsourcing, offshore moves, and an *BM approach of slashing jobs across the board as we drink the Kool Aid that Bain & others are serving to the Executive Team.