Wow! What a crazy and wonderful ride it has been during my first 90 days at Arrow Electronics. I have met numerous customers, suppliers, partners, stakeholders and employees across the entire globe. Visiting our Value-Add distribution center in Phoenix (and yes, my open toe, 4 inch heels were quickly swapped out for my running shoes), spending time with our teams in Milan, Munich and Tel Aviv and meeting scores of customers all helped me get a better sense of our capabilities and the opportunities that lie ahead.
Two themes emerged during my many meetings (1) strong passion and customer orientation with our employees and (2) a true understanding of the crucial role we play in our customers’ success. My interactions confirmed the merits of Arrow’s strategy and long term investments. In a fast changing landscape of disruptive technologies and new business models, Arrow is in a unique position to make dramatic impact in the industry, with OCS leading the way!
With nearly 40% of Fortune 500 business at risk of not existing in the next 10 years*, all businesses are going through an inflection (or more popularly called, “pivot”) point where they need to transform their business and create new opportunities. This is where my team comes in – we help customers design, build, and deliver intelligent systems. In helping our customers get product to market, they see our people as their assets and an extension of their engineering teams. While the broad Arrow capabilities are primed to drive customer and supplier success, the relationships of trust that our people have forged are the glue that makes the difference. Many external stakeholders expressed the need for agility and flexibility in navigating new business challenges. They also stressed the importance of global orientation in their partner capabilities. Among the business trends that preoccupy customers, commoditization of hardware platforms is the most dominant. This steers their focus to value-add services, software and cloud capabilities much more than hardware. All of which fall dead center in the strategic mission and value proposition of OCS.
In my exchanges with our team, I am impressed with the expertise and passion our people exude. Our distinctive position in the Arrow capability stack creates special challenges as well as opportunities. Internal stakeholders are brimming with creative ideas on how we can add more value to our customers.
As our business growth continues, scaling our processes and capabilities to our increased size is essential. Assessing progress with rich metrics will also be important. It is not surprising that many of our teams also highlighted the need for talent. Like all technology companies our need for exceptional talent to lead our sales and support functions is acute. Harnessing our people’s passion, attracting new talent and making the right investments will serve as key thrusts in my efforts moving forward.
I feel inspired and encouraged by what I have seen and experienced in the first 90 days at Arrow! I also feel that continuous and open engagement with all stakeholders is crucial for our success. It is with this intent that we are launching this blog. I envision this as a forum for you to engage and eagerly solicit your participation. In the coming weeks and months I will write more about my experiences in my role and my views on our industry.
