TD Synnex became the world’s largest IT distributor and solutions aggregator when the merger between Tech Data and Synnex closed last year. One of the challenges the combined business faces is uniting each of the two previous companies’ partner communities – TechSelect (initially part of Tech Data) and Varnex (initially part of Synnex) – under a cohesive framework. Undoubtedly, there are several moving pieces.

Despite these challenges, TechSelect and Varnex partners are meeting more than just expectations. This year they garnered $6.3 billion-worth of buying power among 1,200-plus members. For now, though, the organizations will remain separate entities unified in purpose.

This Time Next Year

However, Kaye McMillan has other plans. McMillan is vice president, sales development group and communities, at TD Synnex. Her job is to effectively combine the two groups.

TD Synnex’s Kaye McMillan

“This time next year we are no longer TechSelect and Varnex. We are one community. The goal is to get to that,” McMillan said.

She discussed those goals in an interview with Channel Futures at TD Synnex’s CommunitySolv conference in Orlando this week. (CommunitySolv is the umbrella organization for TechSelect and Varnex). McMillan covered a wide array of topics, from her future goals for the communities to macroeconomic issues affecting partners.

Channel Futures: As part of the restructuring plans, oversight of the communities moved from marketing to sales. Now it’s your responsibility. Why was oversight the right move?

Kaye McMillan: What we really wanted to do is to bring the communities into the sales organization so there is more ownership and accountability. What does that mean? It means a couple of things in my mind. We want to measure them and their success internally against the growth of our partners in the community so that the sales team has some skin in the game as well. And not that they didn’t before. But we want our experience for our community members to be even better. We, too, want to prioritize our community members because they’re investing in us, and they are loyal to us. We should be responding to that.

See our slideshow above to learn what else McMillan had to say about bringing these groups together.