Exclusive Q&A with Intelisys President John DeLozier: Joining ScanSource ‘My Dream Job’

… We want to get them excited about our ability to sell their stuff, no matter where the partners are. Those are the underlying, overhanging principles that we’ll follow. And all the rest will take care of itself.

CF: Do you mind digging into what you said about about the supplier experience? You are someone who has a unique perspective on that as someone who has worked with Intelisys for a long time and had a pretty good relationship with Intelisys from two different suppliers. What kind of unique perspective do you bring toward serving those supplier partners?

JD: It’s a good question. First off, nobody in our business – no other company – has the kind of back office that Intelisys has, period. They just don’t. It’s an amazing experience for the partners. It’s amazing experience, quite frankly, for the suppliers. Because of our size and capabilities, we put the right processes and the right people in place to make that experience not only unique, but pretty simple. Now you know that in technology lots can go wrong. And I don’t think it’s a matter of if things go wrong. I think it’s a matter of when they do. How do you react? And I can tell you from the supplier side, even back in my previous position and position before that, I’ve taken a lot of arrows over the years because of my admiration for Intelisys. And that admiration has come from not only their ability to sell, but their ability to support and their customer experience all the way across the board. Obviously, the same applies for ScanSource. So we’re pretty excited. It’s a pleasure, frankly, to now be on this side. And now I understand why those experiences went so well. Because I see the amount of people and processes behind the scenes that make it happen. It’s amazing.

CF: Is there anything else you want to add?

JD: It’s important to note that we’ve made some really key acquisitions over the last four to six years. ScanSource acquired Intelisys in 2016, creating this channel of the future around hybrid distribution. I call us technology orchestrators. That’s really what it is. But since then, we’ve acquired a couple other things. One, we acquired a company called RPM, which is the commissioning platform in our industry, that calculates and pays agency commissions. Most of Intelisys’ competitors use that platform. We love it.

Another one we acquired was a company called intY, which is a cloud services distributor that enables software provisioning, data analytics, team management, billing, support – all of those things. Lastly, on the ScanSource side, we acquired a company called POS portal, which is a leading distributor of payment devices and services, primarily in SMB. My point in mentioning all that to you is that we continue up the game when it comes to the customer and partner experience. And again, it’s very difficult for our competitors to keep up with that. So it’s not just the people, it’s not just the processes. It is about organic growth, but our acquisitions that are very much inorganic have taken the experience up another notch.

CF: And I imagine you can say that from personal experience, having partnered with all these companies in the industry already. You partnered with the competitors, so you’re kind of able to qualitatively say that about Intelisys.

JD: Yeah, I have experience with all of the partner community and many different suppliers. And I can promise you, in my career, I’ve not seen systems, processes and people that can be delivered like we can do it at ScanSource and then Intelisys. It’s second to none. And yeah, you’re right. I am an expert in that field. I can definitely say that confidently.

CF: Is there anything you else you’d like to say?

JD: Thanks for a great discussion as always. I can’t wait to see you at Channel Partners. And hopefully we’ll sit down and do it again.

Over the next six months we’re going to bring to market some really cool, disruptive, innovative things. But the thing I would leave you with is: This is my dream job. And it’s not short-term. It’s anything but, and I cannot wait to connect with all of our partners out there — hopefully live but also virtually — and get to know them better and continue to bring to market technology orchestration delivered. It’s going to be pretty awesome. I’m looking forward to it. Six days feels like two hours. I can’t wait to get it on.