TechSelect: TD Synnex Recruiting Next-Gen Vendors for Latest Partner Solutions

TD SYNNEX TECHSELECT — TD Synnex is focused on attracting next-generation vendors to foster more growth and expansion opportunities among partners.

That’s according to Cheryl Neal, TD Synnex’s vice president of new vendor acquisition, and Kristi Kirby, TD Synnex’s vice president of vendor management, edge solutions. Both were longtime Tech Data vets before last fall’s $7.2 billion mega-merger of Synnex and Tech Data to form TD Synnex.

Neal and Kirby are among numerous TD Synnex channel executives at this week’s TechSelect Spring 2022 conference in Phoenix. TD Synnex’s three partner communities logged year-over-year growth in the second quarter. In addition, more than 50 new members have joined the communities so far this year.

Bigger Organization with More Resources

In a Q&A with Channel Futures, Neal and Kirby talk about their experiences since the merger. They also talk about how new TD Synnex vendors are driving explosive growth.

Channel Futures: Both of you had long histories with Tech Data before the merger. How have your roles changed since becoming part of TD Synnex?

TD Synnex’s Cheryl Neal

Cheryl Neal: I’m really fortunate because when we merged, immediately I had a team that was from both legacy organizations. So immediately I had those connections of who to go to and what our capabilities are. And so my role hasn’t necessarily changed as just grown and expanded. I’m responsible for new vendor acquisition and there was new vendor acquisition on the legacy Synnex side. But now it’s a bigger organization. We have more resources and we’re bringing the best practices together.

The other part of it was our global solutions, where we’re working with the multinational companies and now we have the expanded geographic coverage. As an example, at legacy Tech Data, we did not have Japan. And now with Synnex, we have Japan. So we have big capabilities now. But I’m really fortunate having co-workers that came from both organizations. I knew who to go to, my team was working really well together and I feel like we jelled immediately.

TD Synnex’s Kristi Kirby

Kristi Kirby: I’ve had various responsibilities within our vendor management or product management segments over time. So as part of that, obviously there were some overlap lines and there were some lines that didn’t overlap within the division. So we did some shifting around of some line responsibilities among both the team at Synnex and Tech Data to really optimize the coverage model. And then from there, also being a legacy Tech Data employee with endpoint solutions, I’ve been able to focus on integration within the systems.

We’re going through an enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration. So just focusing on building a team, combining the cultures, combining the teams and of course at the heart of that is no disruption to our business, only enhancing it. And we have all these new capabilities. There are great capabilities, but there’s not that much overlap, which has been awesome for us because we’re going to be able to bring things different to our partners. There’s been also a lot of learning quickly for us to figure out what those capabilities are and how we can best put them in the market in the speediest way.

See our slideshow above for more from Neal and Kirby, and more from day two of TechSelect 2022.