Fresh off some major structural changes to their business in Canada last year, D&H Canada is primed for strong growth again, with a new metro Toronto distribution and configuration centre as a featured element.
Michelle Biase, General Manager of D&H Canada
Last year, D&H Canada underwent a major restructuring, consolidating its existing portfolio into its Modern Solutions business unit under a single leadership team while also deepening focus on their cloud and collaboration technologies. This led to strong performance numbers in late 2022, which included year-over-year [YOY] growth of between 20 and 40% in key focus areas like Modern Solutions and collaboration/digital signage.
“It was a very strong year for us, particularly in all the investments we have made in Canada,” said Michelle Biase, General Manager of D&H Canada. “We expanded our line card and because of that, we had 20% growth in our commercial conditions, and were very strong in personal computing, with over 20% growth there.”
Biase said that the Modern Solutions business unit, which came North to Canada last year after being highly successful in D&H’s American business, succeeded in its goal of making partners more effective at selling broad solution sets.
“In our Modern Solutions business unit, partners can work with us to build our full end to end services,” Biase stated. “We have our own cloud marketplace that we announced last year, which lets them build out across several product areas and which allows them to provide things in a very customized offer. It’s end to end customization.”
A key thing in making all of this work in a hybrid world is getting the collaborative aspects right.
“We make to make sure we have the right talent to support those partners,” Biase said. “If we can make collaboration technology work well, we don’t have to worry about where people work. That’s’ why we had more than 40% growth there.
“For us, collaboration is a full end to end offering, with a suite of software and hardware like suites and phone systems from Jabra and Poly,” she continued. “We are thinking about how to best build meeting room personas into that, as well as wrap professional services around it.”
Looking forward, D&H just launched the Cisco Partner Enablement platform.
“We think the data centre will be a big focus in 2023, so we have provided a full product catalogue, all in one portal,” Biase said. “We will be adding more vendors to this, which will help our mid-size vendors.
D&H Canada just did a grand opening for its new west coast distribution centre in Surrey B.C., although it actually opened back in September. They also plan to move their Ontario distribution centre, where they have been since 2004 and which is in Brampton, to a larger facility in Mississauga. The move is scheduled for later in 2023.
“Our new warehouse in Mississauga will have a 5000 sq ft configuration centre, our first such configuration centre in the Canadian market,” Biase said. “That will open up doors for us. Our partners want to learn more about it already.”
The number of small events in regional venues is also being enhanced.
“We will be doing a different variety of events, up to 15 in total,” Biase said. D&H Canada also recently added 13 new channel facing personnel comprised of eight in-field salespeople, seven of whom have direct experience with channel distribution companies.
D&H’s popular SuccessPath technical training and business transformation program is also being fully built out in the Canadian market in 2023, to help teach solution providers how to build a successful MSP practice. The program offers tactical, step-by-step training on how to develop and improve their cloud services offering, with resources designed to increase the partner’s competencies in professional and managed services, complement their solution offerings, and optimize their profitability. Many of the program’s resources are live as of Q1 of 2023.
“SuccessPath helps our partners compete against other marketplaces, and build successful practices,” Biase said.
