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CDW’s diversity work pleases
government and corporate clients
“Our supplier ASI is always looking to be better
and provide more value to its customers and we do the same thing,” says CDW’s supplier diversity manager
 CDW (Vernon Hills, IL) is a leading provider of IT and other technology products and services for business, government and education. Nita Smith, CDW’s manager of supplier diversity, says the company’s supplier diversity program began in 2007. There were two different spurs to the move, she explains.
First is the fact that CDW’s CDWG group is a prime supplier to the federal government. “Government requirements got us into contract work with small businesses more than five years ago,” Smith says. “We wanted to not only track that part of our business, but develop more relationships there so we could continue to grow our small-business set.”
The second reason was prompting by some of CDW’s large corporate clients. They wanted to work on their  own diversity goals through purchases from CDW, and for that they needed CDW to bring in diverse suppliers and publish appropriate stats.
Joining NMSDC
Once the need became apparent, the company responded by joining NMSDC (www.nmsdc.org). “We attended their national business fair and educated ourselves on what supplier diversity is and how it’s being developed in other organizations similar to ours,” Smith explains. “We wanted to see best practices: the best ways to do it and do it right.”
Smith has been at CDW for ten years. She started in the company’s finance organization, then moved to supply chain, “which is really where the supplier diversity program started,” she says.
“Within our procurement organization we began to look at who we were doing business with, and analyze where we could add diverse partners.”
Smith found the supplier diversity community very willing to share with her. “Supplier diversity reps at a number of companies told us about their first steps, and their trials and tribulations along the way,” she recalls with pleasure. “Some great advice and even documentation is actually downloadable on the NMSDC website,” she notes.
Launching an advisory council
As Smith worked on the research, it became apparent to her that supplier diversity would have to be a fulltime job, not something she could do in addition to her supply chain work. “I quickly learned that partial focus wouldn’t suffice, and my manager agreed,” she remembers.
When she started to analyze the data, she realized that most of CDW’s existing diversity spend was with just a few suppliers. “We realized we couldn’t stop there; we needed to figure out what else we could do to leverage supplier diversity in our organization.”
The next step was to create CDW’s own supplier diversity advisory council. It included CDW senior managers from many different areas of the organization: basically any group that interfaced with the supply chain.
“We pulled them into a room, brought in a consultant, and he and I proceeded to educate all those business-unit leaders as to what supplier diversity really is and why they needed to leverage it in their own various areas.”
Some of the execs, she notes, had really never thought about supplier diversity. “They were pleasantly surprised at how impactful it could be for their businesses.”
Showing the business case
Smith and the consultant showed the execs the business case. “We gave them perspectives on specific scenarios,” she recalls.
“They really got engaged and started to attend events and train their teams. Best of all, they would reach out to us when they were looking for a supplier for a new opportunity.
“We’ve done a lot of thinking about what matters to CDW when it comes to our suppliers, and supplier diversity has become a new criteria for us.”
The advisory council is still going strong. At first it met once a quarter, but the 2009 agenda has been scaled back to just two meetings. The council’s prime purpose was to help launch a supplier diversity program that would be beneficial to the organization and the suppliers, and “That’s been done,” says Smith. “Now the focus is on maintaining current relationships, creating new opportunities and continuing growth.
“We don’t have a centralized purchasing department,” she explains. But the company has been looking at consolidating some areas to create a more streamlined purchasing process. This, Smith thinks, would allow even more opportunities to bring in the diverse supplier community.
Based on best value
CDW believes, “and customers agree,” says Smith, “that they get the best value when they purchase products and services from us.
“We feel the same way when we need suppliers. We don’t necessarily want the lowest figure on the purchase order, but we do want somebody we feel we can count on and who will be there for a long-term relationship.
“We want value-added suppliers, we want to work with our customers and we want to bring loyalty to the relationship. It’s our idea to take a holistic approach in selecting our vendors, rather then just picking up a phone book or choosing them out of a directory. We want to make sure we’re getting the best value so we can provide the best service.”
ASI meets and
exceeds expectations
And that, says Smith, “is where ASI has done really well. They bring great pricing and, when we measure our suppliers and track their progress, we always find that ASI has met or exceeded our expectations.”
Kent Tibbils, VP of marketing for ASI, notes that ASI is an MWBE owned by Christine Liang, who started the company in 1987. Today it’s the largest WBE in the greater San Francisco Bay area, with 2007 revenues of $1.4 billion.
Back in the ‘80s, Tibbils remarks, “We didn’t completely understand the benefits of promoting our status as a woman-owned business, but today it’s an important part of our strategy and the overall value we offer our clients.”
ASI is certified by NMSDC and, just last year, by WBENC. “Today we find it a big benefit to be able to validate that, yes, we’re really an MBE and a woman-owned company.” That’s especially true for clients that have specific initiatives promoting diversity partnerships, he adds.
Networking solutions
ASI is a computer hardware distributor. “We distribute a wide range of computer components,” Tibbils explains, “and CDW purchases a variety of products from us. Most of our business centers around networking solutions.”
CDW’s Smith notes that the company has been working with ASI since 2007. It started with a cold call from a salesperson. “He had worked for one of our partners and was very familiar with CDW. So I did my research and verified that ASI would be a good business partner to work with.”
The first PO was placed in July 2007, and in the first quarter of the relationship CDW made several million dollars of purchases. “That has continued to increase in the year and a half we’ve been doing business,” Smith discloses. “ASI truly brings value to the relationship because they perform consistently, provide competitive pricing and introduce buyers and marketing co-workers to new technologies.”
Today CDW is one of ASI’s top ten accounts, Tibbils discloses. “One of the great things is they have so many opportunities, so many different ways that they get products to their customers. We can offer different types of solutions, different ways of combining things, and we’ll find that CDW has a mechanism for getting that solution into the channels for their customers to be able to use it.”
ASI has also been able to expand on its third-party logistics (3PL) business. “We have a lot of logistics capabilities for our own offerings but had never done logistics for anybody else. Now we’re offering it to CDW and other clients, too. I think we’ve definitely learned a lot from working with CDW; they give us a lot of guidance and help.”
Coming along together
You might say that CDW and ASI grew into their relationship together.
“I would say, yes, we did come along together,” says Smith. “ASI is always looking to be better and provide more value to its customers and CDW does the same thing.
“You might call it a real value-added partnership,” Smith concludes.
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