A Solutions Integrator

DB: The third factor is simply the opportunity. If you look at my background at Capgemini, I did almost every job you could do. I ran every major business Capgemini had. I did it globally. I did in the U.S. I ran vertical industries. I built hundreds of relationships with great people. And so I asked myself, “Am I going to go back to a VAR?” There’s that initial question of “What is this, and is that really good idea?” But then you get into it and hear Joyce talk about being a solution integrator. It’s really her vision.

You started thinking about what the components are. There are 34,000 businesses in the US that do more than $100 million in revenue of any type. We have 29,000, customers largely from the same list. To put that the reach and level of relationships into perspective, Capgemini, despite having a much larger services footprint, would be some very small single digit percentage of that customer base. So you start with the reach, and then you say, “What do we really do?”

At Insight, there’s tremendous depth in architecture – like actually helping clients figure out what to do – that I had kind of taken for granted. On the system integrator side, there is a massive set of partner relationships, including a lot of depth and significant organization at the top. There’s the ability to procure, there’s ability to manage logistics, there’s ability to do all the configuration, and then there’s a full range of IT services I was familiar with. 

Here’s what the solution integrator opportunity really is. We are competitive in any one of those things, but there’s plenty of people that do each of them. Where we’re really unique is our ability to do multiple categories together. There’s nobody with the level of balance that we have across those. It gives us a unique ability to help many, many different types of customers out there. Dealing with Walmart and dealing with a startup business in Connecticut are very different animals. But we can use that to be a different Insight – to be the right Insight – for each of those customer segments as we go. As I saw that opportunity and went through many discussions, I saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime.

We’ve had a good history. We’ve had something like six or seven straight record setting quarters. The business by all measures is going well. But we’re in our very early stages of where this potential goes. That attraction combined aligning with Joyce and with working with a fabulous set of people was just way too much pass up.