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Westcon-Comstor net profit returns to black

Distie boss reveals his top priorities for 2019
Westcon-Comstor's Phil Cameron

Westcon-Comstor's Phil Cameron

Westcon-Comstor Australia has seen its net profit turn around from $5.2 million in the red in 2018, to back in the black at $995,952 for the year ending 28 February. 

Revenues for the distributor also increased 7.8 per cent to more than $442 million in Australia.

Westcon-Comstor Australia managing director Phil Cameron has been at the helm for the past 18 months, watching the company grow more than 16 per cent since then. 

So far, he has spent time building up its leadership team, investing in a digital distribution platform and growing its services business.

Cameron has attributed its growth to its core vendor portfolio including Cisco, Check Point, F5 Networks, Juniper, NetApp and Palo Alto Networks. 

“We’re going to continue our vendor specialisation, investment in our digital distribution platform and rolling out our services offerings. We’re doing a lot of work around complementary vendors,” he said. 

“We’ll continue with the strong leadership that I’ve brought into the team in the last 12 months, and we’ve been focusing on being a real specialist distributor, driving deep skills through our core vendors.”

On the investment in its digital distribution platform, Cameron said it was continuing to focus on building the platforms that integrate with its partners making way for more tools and simplifying the customer experience.

In particular, this will allow them to look at their quotes, processes and the way in which they can integrate with the partner’s technology, alongside new types of offerings, all in order to help partners grow and thrive. 

In the past few years, Westcon-Comstor has globally rolled out a new SAP platform that integrates with these digital tool sets, plus purchasing, renewals, sales management, cloud services and new software offerings, calling it the Westcon Digital Distribution Application Stack. 

Another priority area of growth is around its services offerings and the growth that has stemmed from its financial services business, Cameron said.

“We’re getting more partners coming to us wanting help with supply chain services, it could be 3PL services for the vendor or partner as well as professional services and because we’ve got the deeper skills, we’re able to help partners consult to their customers on solutions, representing and working with the partner community,” he added. 

“Also we have Westcon Financial Services which provides traditional and non-traditional finance offerings  based on a deal-by-deal structure, that’s own internal Westcon financial services, underwritten by our parent company, Datatec. We’re starting to see that as a priority and seeing good growth coming out of that business."

Cameron also pointed out that the distributor was keenly focused on developing the emerging talent within its business and promoting staff.

Westcon currently has more than 190 staff and with Cameron at the helm, the rest of the leadership team involves John Poulter as Comstor director; Phil Rettenmaier as director of infrastructure and security; Steve Jones who leads UCC and emerging vendors; Tim Rolland as A/NZ global client director; Belinda Balchin who is the Telstra business director and Stacy Hall director of cloud and services. 

In the past 18 months globally, the distributor also embarked on bringing its sales operations back in-country, undertaking a reverse transition of previously outsourced functions, back into its own shared services centres. 

Cameron echoed the same sentiment from its parent company, Datatec, on the move which has now seen a clear improvement in customer service and transaction execution.