Bull's Eye Award: Distributor of the Year - CHALLENGER

Avnet Technology Solutions
The traditional role of distribution is pick, box and ship product to solution providers for installation. Distributors also provide training, support and enablement services to help their solution providers find and deploy valued technologies. Avnet is going beyond the enablement role to be a holistic facilitator of solution provider business development and maturation.

Avnet’s SolutionPath program is a hybrid of solution provider enablement and nurturing. Through SolutionPath, Avnet provides its participating solution providers with a portfolio of support services and expert guidance for go-to-market and risk management strategies with the singular focus of maximizing growth and profitability. It helps solution providers identify the best market opportunities, and provides the technology training and support to capitalize on existing and emerging trends in such areas as virtualization, security, data networking, unified communications and storage.

The distributor is even providing alignment guidance and training around hot verticals, such as health care and government. Solution providers participating in health care and government alignment training and nurturing programs are enjoying as much as 50 percent year-over-year revenue growth.

Part of the magic behind SolutionPath is instilling the customer perspective in solution providers’ training and marketing. Solution providers receiving lead generation support from Avnet are better able to approach and engage with their end users, which results in a higher sales close rate.

As analyst firm IDC noted, “Avnet has become more than a value-add distributor; it has become a true partner enablement engine.” Channel Insider agrees, and believes other value-add distributors could learn from Avnet’s example. For that reason, Avnet has earned the Channel Insider Challenge Bull’s Eye Award for Distributor of the Year.