Secret Agent Man

CDW’s Ian Kieninger

“They are probably the largest agent that you’ve never heard of,” says Henry Kaestner, CEO of Bandwidth.com, a reseller of voice, data and managed network services. Bandwidth.com has been selling carrier services through CDW since 2003, and says it is by far the company’s largest VAR partner, pushing close to a quarter million dollars of business every month.

CDW, a public company, is tight-lipped about its carrier services revenue but says it’s one of the fastest-growing segments of its business with year-over-year gains ranging from 30 percent to 60 percent since 2001. That’s when the company focused its sales and customer service machine on carrier services as part of a corporate initiative to help its primarily small and midsize business customers design and select advanced technology solutions. Several technology specialist teams were formed to provide expertise in specific areas such as telephony, storage, security, power, network design and software licensing. “Becoming a carrier services agent was an extension of that strategy,” says Ian Kieninger, general manager of carrier sales for CDW. “We were successfully selling the products that were literally plugging into carrier networks.”

That logic in and of itself was not enough to send CDW rushing headlong into the carrier services fold, where it was sure to encounter a culture contrary to its own, which is based on speed and hightouch customer service. Its tagline, after all, is: “The Right Technology. Right Away.”

What tipped the scales was customer outcry. Recall that this decision was being made during telecom’s nuclear winter when carriers were laying off staff, resources were shifting to top customers and SMBs were not telcos’ priorities. “This was an opportunity to get involved and service our large base of small to medium-sized customers,” says Kieninger.

Kieninger was recruited by CDW in 2003 to head up the carrier sales group. Previously, he was the AT&T channel manager responsible for the CDW account and was one of the advisers that helped CDW develop its offers and processes. “CDW is intent on creating a first-class telecommunications buying experience for SMBs,” says Ken Grimsley, vice president of strategic sales at CDW. “Ian’s AT&T experience and channel relationships along with his customer-service focus made him a natural fit to play a key role in helping us accomplish this goal.”

Kieninger says his carrier experience has been helpful to CDW in understanding how to interface with behemoths like his former employer and, conversely, in showing vendors how to work with CDW.

What his experience did not prepare him for was the pace of CDW’s sales and service environment. “CDW moves so quickly. We deliver technology right away,” he says. “So, we are trying to adopt that philosophy in telecom.”

This means same-day or next-day quotes and designs, and real-time access to account status and billing information. Getting suppliers on board is a challenge, Kieninger admits. To “indoctrinate” them, channel managers are asked to shadow CDW’s voice and data account managers to better understand the time pressures they are under. “I am trying to share that culture. It is a challenge,” he adds.

Bandwidth.com’s Kaestner believes that this emphasis is key to his company’s relationship with CDW. “[CDW] realized early on that their core competency was building great customer relationships,” says Kaestner. “They also had really smart telecom sales guys on the floor. What they didn’t have was a telecom OSS.” Bandwidth.com provides CDW with quoting, order status and trouble-ticket systems for products such as T1s, SIP trunks and VoIP for multiple carriers.

“Ian has done a great job of working with us and trying to help us make our systems even faster than they are. He is always lobbying for that,” says Kaestner.

At the same time, Kieninger is lobbying for his carriers to adopt CDW’s culture, he and his team are evangelizing the carrier services products to the account managers on sister specialty teams and with the sales reps who take orders for gear. “Ian has done a great job of building awareness within a 2,000-person sales organization that CDW doesn’t need to be just a box seller,” says Kaestner, noting he has on-site staff supporting CDW’s carrier sales teams’ efforts at internal education.

With so much attention focused inward on CDW’s vast customer base, it’s no wonder CDW’s carrier sales group has gone under the retail radar screen. All marketing efforts have been to generate leads from within the base leveraging one-on-one customer relationships and, to some extent, in-packaging fliers. If you are determined, you can find the carrier services offers on the company Web site (it’s under Networking/ Voice & Data). A bevy of some 30 referral agents is the primary contact the group has with the outside world. Outward advertising, such as the company’s TV commercials, have yet to feature carrier services. Mention of a BlackBerry device in a recent campaign has left Kieninger hopeful that the long silence soon will be broken.

CDW’s Carrier Sales Organization includes 30 employees (some are pictured above) supporting some 3,000 wireline contracts.

With more than 3,000 wireline contracts in place and a proven leadgeneration process, there seems to be little incentive for CDW to crank up the volume. Case in point: CareerBuilder.com. The online job search center has been a CDW customer for about seven years. At year four, it learned of CDW’s voice and data services and in year five decided to take them up on the offer by specifying an MPLS network connecting its remote offices that were newly outfitted with Avaya PBXs. CareerBuilder’s IT manager, Ron Hayman, says, “We had a lot of success with them in the hardware area with delivery and them introducing us to new technologies and options. When it came to this, we went to them to find out what options were available.”

The design, which leveraged Global Crossing’s VoIP network, saves the company about $500,000 annually and enables it to offer local customer service numbers to customers no matter where they are in relation to CareerBuilder’s 33 locations. The implementation earned CareerBuilder accolades from Computerworld Magazine, which named the company a Computerworld Honor Laureate in this year’s Honors Program recognizing information technology companies.

CareerBuilder is the quintessential portrait of a CDW customer, which has been won over one technology specialty at a time. Since its carrier services contract went so well, it has since turned over its PBX business to CDW’s telephony specialty team. And, says Hayman, “They provide great value and we’re looking for further opportunities to extend our spend with them.”

CDW is only too happy to oblige. Its platform, which supports multiple disciplines with deep product knowledge, feeds right into the current business technology migration toward convergence and enterprise mobility. A Custom Services Organization coordinates among the specialist teams, including the carrier sales group, to bring end-to-end solutions together. “There are always a lot of projects that tie into what we do,” Kieninger says.

Thanks to demand for ubiquitous, always-on connectivity, it seems the relative anonymity of CDW’s Carrier Sales Organization might soon be compromised.

Cover story photos by Wendy Morris of CDW