CDW consolidates sales

CDW is reorganizing to unify its sales activities and share best practices between public sector and commercial operations.

The company has combined public- and corporate-sector sales teams into a single sales organization that reports to James Shanks, executive vice president. The company’s public-sector group, CDW Government, will retain that branding, and continue to focus on local, state and federal government, education, and health care.

The move presents “an opportunity to get all the selling organizations under one single focus,” Shanks said. The company aims to “create an environment to harvest the best practices in both sales organizations and get some additional synergies,” he added.

For example, CDW-G’s market segmentation strategy, exemplified by last year’s launch of its health care group, will now be applied to the company’s corporate side.

In addition, the reorganization will let CDW gain operational efficiencies, Shanks said. For example, the company has combined two contracts organizations, he said. Now a single contracts organization handles bids, proposals and post-award management.

The restructuring has resulted in some shifting of executive responsibilities. Harry Harczak, formerly responsible for corporate sales, will bring together the company’s marketing and purchasing organizations as executive vice president of marketing, purchasing and business development. Douglas Eckrote, formerly responsible for purchasing and operations, now handles operations, logistics and customer services as senior vice president.

In other moves, Vice President Chris Rother has increased her responsibilities to federal government as well as education, health care and state and local government, a company spokeswoman said.