Press release
Alice Smitheman is appointed to key role of Azlan Marketing Director while Andy Dow re-joins the group as Director of Marketing for Computer 2000
Computer 2000, the UK arm of Tech Data, has underlined its commitment to driving growth for its partners and customers with two key senior marketing appointments.
The first sees Alice Smitheman move from her current role as UK Marketing Director for Computer 2000 to take up the newly-created and strategically important post of Azlan Marketing Director. The second sees Andy Dow re-join the company as Marketing Director for Computer 2000.
Andy Gass, Managing Director of Computer 2000, said: "Alice brings tremendous experience and knowledge to this new and vitally important role and adds further considerable strength to Azlan's UK management team. Azlan is ideally-placed to lead the way in driving channel growth in the area of converged infrastructure around the data centre, high-speed networking and unified communications, all of which we see as being major areas of growth for our business. We have clearly stated our intention to become the major force in the enterprise distribution sector and have made a number of important vendor signings and invested to bring in experienced individuals into key roles. Alice's appointment is yet another demonstration of our total commitment and determination to succeed."
Dow returns to Computer 2000 after an absence of 10 years. Dow held a number of positions during his previous four-year stay at Computer 2000 including General Manager of Marketing. Dow had recently been running his own consultancy business, IT Channel Works.
Commenting on his appointment, Gass stated: "We are delighted to welcome Andy back into our UK management team. He brings with him, not only vast experience within major distribution and vendor organisations and in-depth knowledge of both volume and value models, but also a good understanding of our organisation and tremendous creativity, energy and enthusiasm. Andy will play a key role in helping us to continue the development of our collection of specialist businesses and in driving acceleration of business growth for our partners."
Commenting on her new position, Smitheman said: "The Azlan division is an exciting place to be with new leadership, a new and different breed of salesperson, a new level of technical expertise and a brand new marketing strategy. How we take products and services to market in the value space requires a very different approach and needs a much deeper specialist touch spanning the whole sales cycle. This evolution in the needs of marketing for our company has been fascinating to develop and I am really excited about the new range of services and value propositions that Azlan is now bringing to market. My new role will be less about classic distributor marcoms and more about end-to-end channel engagement programmes that educate, enable and activate reseller partners in emerging technology segments."
Commenting on his new role, Dow stated: "I am delighted to be joining Computer 2000 at this stage of its evolution and excited by the opportunities opening up for the business. As UK's largest IT distributor, the scope of impact that Computer 2000 can achieve is unrivalled, both in terms of the range of products it makes available to resellers and the access to multiple customer segments it offers to vendor partners. The pace of change in distribution is increasing and marketing will play a key role in shaping the future success of channel programmes and helping resellers make the most of their opportunities. Computer 2000 will continue to deliver new and exciting campaigns to ensure our partners can maximise their potential and drive their growth and profitability."
