Walters and Ingram: the exit interview

CRN caught up with John Walters hours after he had notified staff that he was leaving Ingram Micro. Walters spoke about his plans for the future and the company he was leaving behind.

CRN: How do you feel?

Walters: Good mate. I've been leading the planning of the restructure for a long time now, really since April. When [Ingram Micro vice president and Australian managing director] Jay [Miley] and I first started talking about it, when we realised something new had to be done to make sure that our salesforce was setup for success and not failure.

We launched the solutions group about three years ago and while that was successful it needed to go to the next level. To do that it needed a much tighter alignment and integration internally.

So that's what we've been planning and Jay said to me about six months ago, "Mate, if it keeps going like this you'll be working yourself out of a role."' [It was] a bit of a joke. But it became pretty obvious as we were [getting] closer to launch that really, to make things work effectively, there wasn't a role for me at my level.

Obviously there was other opportunities. But Jay and I discussed it - I thought it was time for me to move on because the other roles weren't really at the scale or the scope that I would find challenging based on what I've done over the last few years.

CRN: There was a whole lot of restructuring a short while ago with jobs being cut and changes to positions. Is this another restructure or another stage in the one process?

The restructure we did in March was clearly a recutting [of] our cloth internally to meet the market - the GFC and the downturn - and to get our cost structure in order.

This restructure is all about setting ourselves up for success and growth and serious alignment into distinct go-to-market business units, one around the volume space and one around the value space.

I don't want to speak for Jay, but I would see this as an extremely positive restructure and I think maybe I could probably be one of the only casualties, if you want to put it that way.

CRN: What does this mean for the Australian channel? You've invested so much of yourself into the role and into the company.

I've always had the philosophy that business has got to be bigger than an individual and I think there's lots of individual contributions which go into any business to make up the culture and significance and the positioning of that business in the market.

If I've been able to have my oar in the water and add value to where Tech Pacific had gone - that's what I've aimed to do and I'm leaving with extremely proud memories.

I also really love the channel and my aim, I suppose, would be to find another role within the channel somewhere where I can add value. I don't believe in going off into another world.

Next page: Reseller or vendor?

CRN: Don't you have non-compete clauses in your contract?

Jay is a very reasonable man, but he's a very competitive man. He and I have agreed on some pretty tight parameters around competitors. But there's a lot more in the channel than distribution. There's a lot of vendors and there's a lot of resellers as well. So I think there's more than enough scope for John Walters to find an opportunity there somewhere.

CRN: It would be easier for you to go to a reseller or vendor instead of a distributor at this stage?

That's right. And look, I think what John Walters would want for his own integrity... I mean, I had four years at LAN1 and then I was headhunted to Tech Pacific which you could say was competitive. But if you look at the relative sizes of Tech Pacific and LAN1 in those days it was chalk and cheese. I mean, you know, LAN1 had just hit $100 million and Tech Pacific was well over the billion.

Obviously Tech Pacific was in a lot of areas in the channel. LAN1 wasn't. We were very focussed on networking and starting to get into security whereas Tech Pacific was across the whole [channel].

So I saw that as a huge opportunity and the actual percentage of revenue where Tech Pacific and LAN1 actually competed was something like 4 percent of Tech Pacific's revenue, which was nothing.

To go from Ingram into a competitor after seven and a half years; I honestly don't know whether I could do that and hold my head high. You never say never but certainly I wouldn't bounce straight into one, no. I'd clearly be looking for a role in a vendor or a reseller.

CRN: What do you want to do?

I'd like to get into a great business that wants to go somewhere. And maybe some of the cross-structural experience and some of the experiences I've had in different segments could add some value to that. I like being reasonably broad so I'd like to get into a broader role than just a very niche role.

I'm keen to have a look around and see what's out there. I'm not going to rush into a decision, I don't need to rush into a decision. It's a case of making sure it's the right thing for the company and the right thing for me, I suppose.

It's definitely going to be in Australia because I enjoy watching my sons play rugby on the weekend too much.

CRN: Which vendors or resellers do you admire or which are doing a good job?

I'll let that one go through to the keeper. I think that there's lots of really good resellers out there- we've dealt with seven thousand active resellers through this downturn. At the end of the day some really good resellers are there who are focussed on their business, they've worked hard on the business to understand the structure and the cost and their go-to-market differentiation strategies.

They've worked on their branding, their positioning in the market and a lot of those resellers are growing at 30, 40 and 50 percent and making good money for the business.

Next page: The impact of niche distribution

CRN: What role would you want to have within a reseller? Sales? Business?

I really think it depends on the type of reseller. If you go to a larger one then a more functional role; if it's a smaller one then a broader role. But it depends on what the reseller wants and where they're going. One thing I hope I pride myself in is I don't have an ego therefore adding value is the most important thing for me.

CRN: Your family must be pleased that you're stepping down from the role?

I think they will enjoy spending a little bit more time with me over the Christmas period. We've got a skiing holiday planned for January in Canada so I think that'll be good.

Sholto: Do you think other disties are going to make similar restructures to be competitive?

Walters: From a distribution point of view I think there's a lot of more niche distributors who are really well positioned within their niche. Whether that is networking, services, software licensing,  server, storage or virtualisation focused, whatever it is, the challenge we've got at Ingram is we're across all of that plus consumer electronics and mass merchants and everything else.

So it's really hard to compete against those more niche focused areas unless you employ a more niche focused strategy and intellectually property and go-to-market structure within your organisation.

And that's what we were trying to do at Ingram. We started that when we started the solutions group. It's not a revolution what Jay has announced, it's an evolution.

I must admit I'm really proud to have had a hand in that and I'll be watching with interest from the sidelines to see how they execute because at the end of the day everything is in the execution. We can all plan but it's the execution that's important. And under Jay's leadership I'm pretty sure they'll give it a bloody good go.

CRN: What's your best memory from Ingram?

The two things that really made me feel proud was re-harnessing SMB in regional Australia and all of the effort we went into there to look after the small and regional business [in the AustraliaWide campaign for Tech Pacific]. I think we tried hard to [tell regional businesses that] we wanted to listen to you and deal with you. The feedback we got was fantastic and the actual results we got were fantastic.

That really fills you with pride. Because that was a campaign where everyone had to roll their sleeves up and do it from the heart rather than from the head.

[The other proud accomplishment was setting up the Solutions Group].

I suppose one of the other things I was pretty proud of was when Jay was new, he came into Australia he's a very smart and very aggressive guy and over twelve months I was able to hopefully give him a bit of a running start in Australia and introduce him around.

The restructure he's announced is largely a case of myself and others taking it this way but obviously it's his leadership and energy taking it to the next level. So I think I helped Jay for twelve months getting settled into Australia and that is good.