Place More Bets: Synnex Wants VARs to Get 100% IT Spend

Synnex executives want solution providers to get greedy.

VARs should be looking to get 100 percent of a customer's IT budget and the distributor is developing plans to help them get there. Peter Larocque, president of U.S. distribution at Synnex, laid out a series of "bets" for solution providers to place in 2011, areas in which the distributor believes there is tremendous opportunity.

The bets include: a solutions focus; converged infrastructure, audio/video; SID design and manufacturing; managed print services; large format print; unified communications; health care and AIDC/POS.

Revenue related to three of those areas increased more than 100 percent for Synnex in the last year, and each one saw growth of at least 40 percent, Larocque said.

Other verticals like retail foods also present big opportunities for VARs to sell everything from checkout systems, mobile devices, specialized mobile apps, onsite app and productivity software to digital signage, wireless and wired networking, servers storage, printers and services, Larocque said.

"Maybe your strength is not selling cash registers, but it is everything else. We can help you learn that to capture 100 percent of the spend, he said.

Mobility is an area where VARs should learn to play defense and offense, Larocque said. There are lots of new products to sell, and thus more opportunity to get 100 percent of the available spend, but there are also more paths to market for mobility. Synnex is creating some relationships with carriers to help VARs capture more of the mobile spend.

"If we don't get into that business, we are going to lose the business. We are in the activation business now," Larocque said. "If you need activations to be a part of your business, we can provide that capability. We sell lots of mobile devices as it is and we want the activation to go after everyone else's business."