Five minutes with.. Jean-Loup Desamaison-Cognet, CEEMEA VP, Arrow ECS

What key trends are driving your business?

In today’s Internet of Things (IoT) era, businesses are being challenged more than ever to evolve their identity and value proposition. As one of the world’s largest distributors of enterprise computing solutions and electronic components, Arrow offers a holistic view into IoT, and here’s some top technology trends we’ll see in 2015.

• The emergence of third-platform technologies are presenting unprecedented opportunities and challenges
• Making the Internet of Things easy for businesses and consumers to understand will be key. This will be done by simplifying both the supply chain and design chain processes through business process efficiency.
• Converged systems will be a key area of growth as more organisations look to leverage the agility, productivity, flexibility, and cost-saving benefits presented by such solutions.
• Security and mobility.

.Are businesses doing enough to keep up to date with technology advances?

We are very impressed by the technological advancements specifically in the GCC. According to IDC, spending on ICT products and services in the Middle East and Africa will cross the $270 billion mark in 2015 and the IT market is expected to grow nine per cent year-on-year in 2015. MEA is the second-fastest growing market worldwide. We can also see some of the world’s leading technology vendors are expanding in this region and they are broadening their offerings as well.

What is most important to us is looking to the vendors’ technologies and aligning with them, as well as looking at new vendors addressing current needs. We have built, at a European level, something called ATG (Advanced Technology Group) allowing us to secure new vendors working locally and globally. We look for solutions and technologies first and then the channel.

What are you expansion plans for the Middle East?

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is 60 per cent of the Middle East market, so it is an important market for us. We are already doing business in the KSA. The resellers can focus on addressing customer needs and leaving us to facilitate the supply chain processes. Since we have the capacity legally and organisationally, Arrow can help vendors and resellers make sure their business practices align with local regulations. We focus on protection – we can say we are a trusted advisor.

We are also looking to explore opportunities in Egypt and Iraq.

In which countries are you seeing most demand?
KSA, the UAE and Egypt.

What are your expectations for Arrow in the region this year in terms of performance?

In this region, we expect a growth of opportunity. We have been working with big enterprise vendors, and they are expanding their portfolio to address SME and mid-markets. This is something we want to develop with them. We want to focus on new routes to market because this ensures expansion of market base and customer base.

We also see security as an important segment – from airport security and internet security – these are big opportunities and we are addressing them globally. Specifically to the Middle East, public security and mobility will affect performance.

Are you hiring?

Yes – we are hiring. We are always looking for talents who can help us drive our growth plans.

What is your leadership style?

We focus on developing consultancy and our training programme. It is difficult for the partner to get on board with new technology so we are able to train them with a consultant doing the first technology implementations with them. We support them, after they’ve trained their own people, we help them with implementation.

Training is key – This gives Arrow the edge. We are the leaders of innovation, and we have the right people. Our focus on talent management and HR is not short term – we build foundations. We are not confined by borders, we have experts globally and visibility everywhere in Europe, we have sent people from the GCC to train in Stockholm, and people have learnt from our specialists here in the UAE as well.

Define success in five words.

Market Share – We want to be the biggest distributor for our vendors and to reach this point through healthy growth. Reference employer – This ensures that we are doing something right if people are eager to work for us. Partner popularity – We want to reach out geographically, globally.