TD Synnex Drives Collaboration Via New Partner Directory

‘This is a big tool [partners] have been calling for. We want to help partners go after new opportunities, expand their technology offerings, and go after new business. With the partner directory, we’re expanding their visibility across 1,200 partners in North America. Before that, partnerships were done more informally, perhaps over lunch,’ says Kaye McMillan, TD Synnex’s senior vice president of sales development and communities.

Global IT distributor TD Synnex has launched a new global partner directory aimed at giving its CommunitySolv solution providers a way to easily partner with each other.

The new partner directory was launched at this week’s CommunitySolv Spring Conference in New Orleans, where over 250 people representing over 225 channel partners in TD Synnex’s CommunitySolv community met to discuss the progress made in building a single community from multiple communities in the past.

TD Synnex was formed in late 2021 with the merger of two large IT distributors, Tech Data and Synnex. However, after the merger, the Tech Data TechSelect and Synnex Varnex communities remained separate organizations, both with separate U.S. and Canada groups.

[Related: TD Synnex CEO Rich Hume: Growth Despite Supply Chain, Talent Shortage]

Such partner communities are formed by most major IT distributors as a way for their channel partners to come together to discuss mutual issues and explore potential partnerships.

TD Synnex’s CommunitySolv community brings the legacy TechSelect and Varnex communities into a single organization, albeit with separate communities for U.S. and Canadian partners.

The new partner directory is the biggest change to CommunitySolv unveiled this week, said Kaye McMillan, senior vice president of sales development and communities for TD Synnex, which has dual headquarters in Fremont, Calif. and Clearwater, Fla.

“We designed the partner directory in response to continual feedback from the CommunitySolv community to make it easier for partners to do business with each other,” McMillan told CRN. “Partners can use it to help drive solutions and partnerships around cloud, security, and data center infrastructure.”

Tim Bynarowicz, TD Synnex’s director of communities, told CRN the partner directory is a tool to help promote and drive collaboration through multiple partners’ various tech expertise, specializations, and solution delivery capabilities.

McMillan said that a partner in one geography without healthcare expertise could use the partner directory to do things like find a local partner with healthcare expertise to help with a customer’s specific requirements, or find a partner in another geography who could take care of a client’s remote offices. In both cases, that partner could greatly reduce the chance of losing a customer to a competitor, she said.

“Our members have been vocal about such a capability,” she said. “This is a big tool they have been calling for. We want to help partners go after new opportunities, expand their technology offerings, and go after new business. With the partner directory, we’re expanding their visibility across 1,200 partners in North America. Before that, partnerships were done more informally, perhaps over lunch.”

The new TD Synnex partner directory is a key part of bringing the TechSelect and Varnex communities into a single CommunitySolv community, said Paul Benson, president and owner of Virtual Communication Specialists, an Athens, Texas-based solution provider and TD Synnex channel partner.

Benson, who is now president and a member of the advisory council of CommunitySolv after serving as president of Varnex for three years, told CRN that TechSelect and Varnex community members complement each other and can work together to create complete solutions for customers.

“Before CommunitySolv and the partner directory, a channel partner couldn’t easily find partners to cover the entire nation or all the specialties,” he said. “There’s a lot of value in IT that needs taking care of. And so you need partners you can trust.”

Benson said that in his 28 years in the channel, he has ridden a lot of different waves.

“No matter how big you are, you can’t handle all the geographies or specialties on your own,” he said. “There are gaps. You need partners. Otherwise, you risk someone else coming in and taking your business.”