CDW incapable of selling enterprise solutions! October 31, 2009
Posted by Kelly Brady in : Venture Capital , trackbackI have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with CDW over the past 15+ years as an employee of several companies. I recently needed pricing on 5 HP servers, Microsoft licensing and a firewall appliance, as part of an infrastructure upgrade project. I called up CDW as a new account, provided detailed written specs and asked for quotes on everything. After waiting 3 days with no answer, I finally go through to the rep. He told me he couldn’t get anyone inside that “area” of CDW to respond to his configuration request. He didn’t seem concerned, apologetic or interested. Here was $50,000+ in business dropping in his lap, and he could care less.
CDW is one of a handful of large, national resale partners with HP. One of their competitors is Insight, a company I had bought hundreds of PC’s from in the mid to late 90′s when they used to make clones. I remembered Insight, called and got a very friendly and eager rep, who took my specifications, listened to the goals I was trying to achieve, and promptly got me quotes within an hour. Insight is publicly traded (NSIT), and part of the Fortune 500.
I have heard reports of CDW’s decline from another unsatisfied customer who is in their “Platinum Circle”, an account with their highest level of service. CDW is now privately held since it was acquired by Madison Dearborn Partnersin 2007 for about $7 billion. Almost all of CDW’s sales come from businesses and the public sector. Yet, MDP categorizes them in their “consumer” portfolio which mingles B2B & B2B companies.
It’s surprising that there would be such a decline of an otherwise good company that coincides with this acquisition. One wonders what happened…does MDP misunderstand CDW’s customer base? Did key players at CDW cash out?
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