CRN Exclusive: CompuCom Snags Former Lenovo, Gartner Executive To Be Chief Strategy Officer

CompuCom has landed a leader deeply immersed in technology and strategy at Gartner and Lenovo to ensure the company stays ahead of the technological change curve.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based company, No. 23 on the 2014 CRN Solution Provider 500, said it was impressed by Hardik Shah's experience around strategy, leading global teams and the IT services industry. Shah replaces Greg Hoogerland, who shifts into a newly-created chief customer officer role focused on ensuring and developing a "customer-first" focus.

Shah told CRN exclusively that he plans to accelerate CompuCom's expertise around mobility, personalization and infrastructure management, with an emphasis on the retail, financial and health care verticals. CompuCom under Shah will also press its advantage around managed workplace services, a space the company has played in for a long time.

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"Any disruption creates new ways to play," Shah told CRN. "They know this space well, and they're positioned to win."

Shah's said his biggest area of focus at CompuCom is around enabling customers to leverage new and emerging technologies to gain a competitive advantage. As the chief strategy officer, Shah said he's responsible for creating a good vision for the company to succeed in the market as it changes.

Shah said his performance should also be evaluated by how the marketplace reacts to CompuCom's new offerings as well as what types of technological capabilities the company moves to acquire under his watch. In the long-run, Shah said his decision-making should contribute a financial performance that satisfies both the company and its major investors.

As the number of devices proliferates, Shah said businesses would need help managing them in a way that provides a competitive advantage. CompuCom is working on several platforms that leverage automation and artificial intelligence to provide best-in-class service around infrastructure management, Shah said.

Data analytics and supporting clients in their migration to the cloud will also help CompuCom with delivering infrastructure management services, Shah said. CompuCom is well-positioned to win in this kind of environment, Shah said, since it has a largely U.S.-based staff of 6,000 technicians and strong capabilities to market to its clients.

Shah said he also wants to work on making service delivery compatible with mobile devices so that users can easily engage with their IT solution provider, regardless of form factor. Personalizing the experience requires CompuCom to know what's relevant to individual users, Shah said, as well as how and where they would like to be supported.

Shah decided to join CompuCom because he believes IT service providers will play a critical role in creating the use cases and environments where end customers can get the most value out of their devices. He believes companies like CompuCom are at the inflection point to help evolve how devices are used in the workplace.

Before joining CompuCom, Shah spent two years driving the growth of Gartner's end user research business as vice president of product management.

Earlier, Shah put in seven years at Lenovo leading the company's systems integration business in Asia-Pacific, driving post-merger integration efforts, leading growth and go-to-market strategies in emerging and developed countries, and spearheading business development initiatives around startups and venture capital firms.

Shah said that CompuCom under his tutelage would continuously look at other verticals or types of offerings as customers move to cloud. There might also be opportunities for greater synergy around mobility, personalization and the Internet of Things, Shah said.

"Those are new opportunities for everybody, not just CompuCom," he said.