Teresa Diaz

CDW-G
Sales in Department of Defense – Federal Government Division
Christopher Nelson
Christopher.Nelson@cdw.com

MKT 393
August 8, 2022
 I. Background
Introduction to CDW-G
Michael Krasny made a small ad in a free-circulation newspaper to sell his computer and
printer and was struck on how many people inquired about his listing which led to
beginning of an electronic business-to-business reseller in 1984 and named the business
CDW, which is short for “computer discount warehouse”. CDW-G was created to further
support our government and education customers in 1998. Aside from selling electronic
hardware, CDW also delivers IT support and other services that will make installation
and learning of the equipment easier for the business to switch over to. Figure 1.

CDW is a fortune 500 company that had completed its first IPO in 1993 and has since
been listed in the NASDAQ stock which makes it a public trading stock. Although when
CDW announced a new CEO and Chairman, John Edwardson, in 2001, it ranked number
435 on the fortune 500 list and on the NASDAQ 100. Later in 2007 CDW goes private
when they were purchased by Madison Dearborn Partners and Providence Equity
Partners. In 2011 a CDW former president and COO, Tom Richards, becomes CEO and
launches the People Who Get IT campaign which allows CDW to focus on how
technology solves everyday business problems. Under his leading the company ranks 267
in 2013. Later introducing many services expanding their managed services and cloud
capabilities, cybersecurity solutions.

One thing that makes CDW distinct is that this company revolves around their customer--
We adapt to your needs, not the other way around– which means that all their products
and services are done with the intention to better fit the customer needs 100% of the time.
With demand growing in the west coast the clients wanted faster and cheaper shipping
stating that it would be a real value adder and CDW realized that they can supply and
accommodate to comply to their customers wants which led to addition of our western
distribution center located in Vegas. Overall, in our more than 30 years, they’ve
dedicated ourselves to customers like you, supporting your tech needs no matter how big
or small.

II. Environment
Competition
CDW-G is a company that specializes in computers, hardware, software, and IT solutions
that come from technology experts. The competitor business all specializes withing the
IT infrastructure section. CDW’s competitors are other larger IT value added resellers
(VARs) for example two main competitors are SHI and Insight. For the federal side the
competitors are OEMs which are Cisco, Dell, HPE as well as distributors like Carahsoft
and Ingram. CDWs sales of industry size is worth $22 billion. The internal environment
supportive but is very competitive, the managers encourage his staff to beat your last
monthly selling so that all sales representative under his section work together to reach a

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quarter target sales amount. In doing so, this encourages the sales representative to win
prizes and big incentive earnings as they all seem to take this task on with determination.

Technology
Federal agencies take pride in keeping their network and security with discreteness and
privacy. In doing so CDW-G a multitude of products and services that provides and
delivers: mobile devices, desktops, laptops, monitors, printers, network, software, IT
infrastructure, mobility, security cloud, storage, and data centers. These arrays of services
make it distinctive and provide many businesses and federal entities integrated solutions.

Economy
Currently in this economy there is a chain supply issue that is causing the orders placed to
be delayed due to limited supplies from the manufacturer. A situation that happens pretty
often is that with the Federal Reserve planning to make yet another big boost in interest
rate later in their July 2022 meeting, is that the product initially was made to close the
deal with a specific pricing but due to the inflation rising and demand of the product
increased, so the pricing rose as well. This would make this deal to close at negative
profit for the company, so this makes a renegotiation with the customer to try to haggle
the prices again. Department of Defense can see some changes due to supply chains and
cannot see the hardware in a year time and will change their needs so they will take care.
The Government has to spend money by a certain date and have bill and possession
before they receive the products. Figure 2.

Legal/Political Factors
According to the Guardian online news, Biden is making a proposal to increase the
pentagons and military spending by 4% due to increasing due to the war in Ukraine. This
means that the budget for the government section is increasing budget spending and the
government will be willing to purchase highly secured cybersecurity. Although a
downside to this is that funding can be adjustment due to inflation and this causes issues
when making contracts that aren’t able to get much funding to purchase equipment due to
the price increasing. This will cause a repercussion that the government clients can’t pull
the trigger on planned deals that were settled before when making a detailed and specific
solution for that customer.

Customer Trends
Customers are trending to do more shopping as they try to keep securities on their work
network secured to make it their work web safer from cyber-attacks. Cybersecurity is
popular because it helps protect the network with next-gen technologies and security
policies keeping the network security so that it may prevent any data breaches. This also
comes in hand with getting a good data IT Asset Management platform from CDW can
help enable and improve managing their IT assets on a ongoing basis which would help
the customers establish controls gaining clearer visibility to their environment and helps
optimizing costs. This gives the customer an excellent way to stay on top of changes to
the network at large, especially ranging from routers, switches or changes implemented to

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 their firewall. Cyber security, CCSP to give a lot more priority on security and
modernizing the older models for speed and agility.

Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic

Currently because of COVID-19 every business were hurting financially have struggled
to keep afloat with all the demand that has resulted after the shutdown., CDW has had
past orders that have been placed in queue but have not been able to deliver the parts or
hardware due to the suppliers having a shortage and are unable to complete the order so
that the invoice can be sent out and the sale representatives can receive their incentives.
This can create frustration in the customers since some of the orders were placed a couple
years ago, the suppliers might have discontinued or raised product prices, and this can
cause the customer to cancel the purchase which will ultimately leads to losing business
to other competitors. Overall, this can be there can be other methods of reassurance for
the customers, for example keeping the customer updated with any news of their orders
usually can keep them less frustrated as well as offering other products that are similar
and are in stock if they should require them quicker.

III. The Organization’s Marketing Mix

Target Market
CDW-G is under the federal section of the states, so these services and products cater to
the government entities who require any type of electronic devices with secured software
and IT specialist help to help provide to their network needs to prevent any data breaches
and overall protect from any outside threat getting a hold of valuable information.

Offerings
CDW-G offers many cybersecurity platforms and cloud solutions to keep up to date from
cyber-attacks, especially when dealing with government equipment. Upon the purchases
of Aptris, Amplified Services, Focal Point and Sirius, which are popular services in the
government sections. To better explain the services: In 2019 we acquired Aptris, which
allowed us to provide services around ServiceNow—a platform for trainings and/or many
functions for sales – to our customers who use them religiously or getting it for the first
time. Figure 3.

Amplified services, Focal Point and Sirius were acquired recently in 2021. To get down
more in specifics of what this means is that with amplified services it enables us to
provide more services that evolves more with development in the workspace, security,
data. Focal points concentrate on services more with cybersecurity realms as well as
training capabilities. If you are asking What does this mean? What this means to our
customer is that when we provide a solution because of focal point it enables us to attach
training courses which would make more for a well-rounded solution. For example, we
can provide the hardware, software, and training to effectively use this solution entirely
to their advantage in mitigating risk and protecting from cyber-attacks. Sirius is more
solutions and services focused which add more of this in-depths to our technical
resources for designing of solutions but also to our services team for onsite delivery of
services by CDW to customers. To sum up, to Further expand our capabilities with Sirius

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 this makes CDW deliver a more wholistic customer experience through a solution-based
approach.

Pricing & Revenue

CDW’s pricing is less inexpensive than their competitors in the Tech & IT area. Many
customers return for the prices and the excellent customer services that are provided by
the account managers and sales representatives.

After the account managers or the sales representatives close their deals and puts in the
order on our SPS system then the order is processed and once the order is shipped, an
invoice is sent and the company and the sales representative receive 10% as an incentive
for closing the deal and making sure the order is arrived, installed and the customer is
fully satisfied.

Distribution
Since COVID-19 pandemic, all the CDW’s employees were assigned to work from
home, and since that moment the sales representative and sales managers were assigned
to their customers U.S. national wide, so this opened a lot of business opportunities to all
the employees for a broader network.

The customers can inquire online the listings of products that they are interested in and
then a sales representative will reach out to them if they want additional help. Other
customers prefer more of a traditional detailed solution that is better tailored to suit all of
their needs do they will contact the department and then the sales representatives work
with the through all of the steps and helps weed out competitors by offering bulk
discounts or in general less costly products and services that are delivered with
exceptional customer services.

The products or services are distributed by the closest warehouse to the business so that
CDW can offer cheaper shipping and handling with different carriers like UPS, FedEx or
if the business has their own partner company, we can have them pick up the products.
The distribution of services is delivered on sight with our Sirius product that provide on-
site installation and delivers and makes sure that the service and product had a successful
startup before the CDW specialist crew leaves and are offered in the U.S, Canada and
United Kingdom.

Marketing Communication
CDW has a strong online presence on LinkedIn and has golfing celebrity endorsement to
raise awareness about the company. There is also advertisement in the city, for example
on the Up-North Metra train station there were a couple being displayed.

IV. SWOT Analysis

Strength

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 Customer services is exceptional here at CDW and is very well known to keep long term
relationship with many partners due to the inexpensive pricing, and quick shipment that
are in the best interest of the customers. Figure 4

Having the giving to the community by having a full paid day off to volunteer at a charity
of your choice and match a donation 10% of your giving.

Weakness
Having inadequate supply chains for fulling orders that are at least a year to 4-month-old.
Due to the chain-supply being late to complete the orders are causing issues for CDW to
provide the customers order sooner than they’d like to.

Opportunities
Technology market is extensively growing which give the company opportunities to
grow in this segment with new opportunities and better cyber security systems. In the
department of defense segment there is always opportunities for increasing sales revenue
since the government section is always willing to spend big dollars to accommodate their
needs.

Threats
Having a tight labor supply could also cause a disruption in being able to pick and ship
the orders quicker than usual. Rising cost for material due to the supply chain companies
trying to keep up with the inflation rate increasing intensively..

V. A Statement of the Benchmark and Marketing Goal

CDW corporation is multi-brand provider of information technology services solutions to
businesses, education, healthcare, and government that hold twenty-eight number of
locations. As of 2021, the annual net sales of approximately twenty-two billion dollars
that handle over two-hundred and fifty thousand customers with a little more than
fourteen thousand coworkers. Going into the third quarter of 2022, the ranking of the
corporation in the fortune 500 rank has now reached #157. CDW-G is the no. 1
technology integrator for the federal government. They are rated top premium cyber
security as of now. Figure 5.

CDW-G will be showing more aggression towards net sales for other competitors so that
they can keep climbing up the fortune 500 list. The company measures their sales on a
quarterly basis by keeping goals to beat their last selling goal from the previous quarter as
well as promoting their account representatives to beat their previous quarter sales too.
Competition amongst themselves is encouraged because “the more effort and harder you
work the more commission will be made”. Although this is a supportive community
because every coworker wants to see their own succeed; Chris Leahy, the CEO and
President of CDW mentioned on a fireside chat with all the interns that the water is
always greener where you water it. With more System Integrator services that are being
offered in the government section it is attracting more leads to potentially make more
partner relationships with these clients.

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VI. Solution to Achieve Goal in 5 years
Chris Leahy has claimed that the company is bound to continue to grow and keeps
finding ways to source for more product availability and continue to research and develop
better ways to find the best solutions for their customers by analyzing the customer
buying trends and forecast what will be more bought out in the near future to be able to
keep up with the clients growing needs.

While speaking to my manager, Chris, about what direction they will try striving to take
to show more aggressiveness in their sales tactic he mentioned that the direction they are
approaching is to educate their employee to learn more about the products that they sell
so that way the sales representatives will be able to make the most accurate representation
of their solutions for the customers needs. With this being said, I’ve also experienced that
they will set up calls with CDW’s Product Partner Management (PPM’s) at Cisco, HPE
and Dell to better acknowledge the product and highlight the products main focus and its
capabilities and how they can approach the customers and make it aware and attractive to
sell in the future while also benefiting the customers needs.

CDW will keep their customers satisfied with their customer relationships and products
pricing as long as they find ways to be able to obtain supply chain more available. A way
that this can be fixed is to source for more options that these products can be acquired to
CDW and be able to give the customers an accurate shipping date and be able to send out
an invoice after shipping the product so the account representatives see their incentives
on their paycheck be motivated to continue to grow and sell more as the employees on
the sales team seem to always be in competition with themselves to better their status and
be able to acquire more leads and potentially making new customer relations with them.
This will also result in more customer loyalty since they can make their one-stop-shop
and continue to become loyal customers instead of browsing around to the competition
for better product availability and product pricing.

CDW is moving up the ladder on the fortune 500 list quickly given that the company has
only been operating since 1984. CDW is gaining many recognitions by many business
entities and government section. CDW can continue to grow more aggressively by
making many more ads and gaining more recognition and awareness by many marketing
advertisements. Figure 6. Showing more LinkedIn presence can also be able to gain more
awareness and cause many more leads to source for a CDW specialist solution if the
employees are able to acquire more than 500+ connection to various of people in
different trades.

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VII. Reference Page
1. “Business IT Solutions & Services Company: CDW.” CDWG, CDW,

www.cdwg.com/content/cdwg/en/about/overview.html#:~:text=It%20All%20Started-,Our

%20Leadership,year%20ended%20December%2031%2C%202021.

2. “CDW Company Profile - Office Locations, Competitors, Revenue ... - Craft.” CDW Company

Profile - Office Locations, Competitors, Revenue, Financials, Employees, Key People,

Subsidiaries, Craft, craft.co/cdw/competitors.

3. CDW Expert. “Start Your Data Strategy by Identifying Your Goals.” CDW, Intel, 6 June 2018,

www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/articles/datacenter/start-data-strategy-identifying-goals.html.

4. CDW Software Resellers Services. “Top CDW Software Resellers Services Competitors &

Alternatives 2022: Gartner Peer Insights.” Gartner Peer Insight, Gartner Inc,

www.gartner.com/reviews/market/software-resellers/vendor/cdw/product/cdw-software-resellers-

services/alternatives.

5. “CDW•G Company Profile - Office Locations, Competitors ... - Craft.” CDW-G, Craft.co,

craft.co/cdw-g.

6. Golle, Vince. “Fed Braces as Another Big US Inflation Number Looms.” Bloomberg.com,

Bloomberg, 9 July 2022, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-09/fed-braces-as-another-

big-us-inflation-number-looms-eco-week.

7. Greve, Joan E. “Biden's Record Defense Budget Draws Progressive Ire over Spending Priorities.”

The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Apr. 2022,

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/03/biden-record-defense-budget-progressive-spending-

priorities.

8. “Information Security Solutions.” CDW, CDW,

www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/solutions/cybersecurity/information-security.html.

9. “Our Story.” CDW, CDW, www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/about/overview/our-story.html.

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10. “PGA Tour and Shotlink Sponsorship.” CDW PGA Tour Sponsorship, CDW, 2022,
www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/pga-tour-sponsorship.html.
11. “ServiceNow Solutions: ITSM, SecOps, CSM, HR.” CDW, CDW,

www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/services/servicenow.html?

cm_ven=acquirgy&cm_cat=bing&cm_pla=S3%2BAMP%2BServices

%2BAmplified&cm_ite=ServiceNow%2BE&s_kwcid=AL

%214223%2110%2174286013969574%2174285962399446&ef_id=b44281982d931acd32d8e35

5a77e316a%3AG%3As&msclkid=b44281982d931acd32d8e355a77e316a.

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VIII. Exhibits (Figures)

Figure 1: Lincolnshire office in Illinois

Figure 1: Lincolnshire office located in Illinois, https://www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/about/overview/our-story.html

This is the CDW Headquarter. This office was the very first CDW building, and it has since been
remodeled. This is where the CEO and President of CDW, Chris Leahy mainly works at since
she lives closer to this area than the Chicago office located on 625 W Adams St. All the Illinois
interns were gathered at the Lincolnshire office while the interns who were out of state joined via
Webex. This gathering happened two weeks before the end of the internship on August 5th, 2022
to have a chance to sit down and have a chance to pick her brain and hear more about CDW and
the direction she will be taking the company. Chris Leahy made an impactful afternoon on the
interns at this office when she gave everyone advice where she mentions that The grass is
always greener where you water it, speaking for those who leave the company in search of a
better job and end up coming back to re-join the family to encourage many interns to become
part of the family.

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Figure 2: CDW stock fluctuating due to the 10-year bond in the market yield

Figure 2: CDW stock fluctuating due to the 10-year bond in the market yield, cdw stock - Search (bing.com)

This picture is a demonstration of how CDW Stock in the NASDAQ has been doing recently. Since
March of 2022 the NASDAQ composite has lowered their stock due to inflation rising on the market
yield causing other companies to go down on corporate rating for investment opportunity although there
is a fluctuation in the graph above the market is steadily increasing as many B2B, Non-profit, State and
Local and government entities have been spending on better security on their technology since they have
to stay up to date to prevent any breeches.

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Figure 3: Recently acquired company timeline

Figure 3: CDW history timeline and acquired partners, CDW.com (internal page)

This shows a brief history of CDW’s origin and history and achievement on acquiring partners. The most
recent acquired partner was Amplified IT, Aptris and Scalar in 2019 and 2021. These partners help out
the customer on achieving great cyber-security and IT solutions training to help the company maintain
their top-notch security to prevent any breaches.

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 Figure 4: SWOT Analysis Chart

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths Weaknesses

 Trainings and Knowledge: CDW will always invest in their  Supply Chains: CDW is having many back orders

employees to better their product knowledge and empower and on certain parts and products which make it harder to

encourage employees to continue their educational growth. be able to consult a secure shipping date to the

 Relationship Selling: CDW maintain many clients happy and customer.

highly satisfied by maintaining their customer relationships and

getting to fully know their customers.

 Pricing and Shipping Distributions: CDW offer many

prices that are affordable for customers to be drawn in by the

numbers they see for the products they are obtaining. CDW has

many shipping distributions that will ship distribution closer to

the customer so their shipping fees are not too expensive and

even offer the customer if they would like to use their own carrier

to better the customer spending.

Opportunities Threats

 Brand Power: CDW has many Diamonds, Platinum and Gold  Product Availability: Due to the inaccurate

partner that are well known for example Apple, Inc, HPE and shipping details to the customers this may cause the

CISCO that may be able to attract more customer if they’re customer to withdraw the order and go elsewhere

selling to B2B and even the government. where the product is available and ready to ship and

 Services: Given the number of partners that CDW has acquired can result in loss of a dissatisfied customer.

it gives the company the ability to reach out to more customers

and be able to provide a wide range and variety of services and

products starting off from a device, hardware, data centers and

cyber securities and even IT specialists help.

Figure 4: SWOT Analysis Chart

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Figure 5: CDW-G Cyber-Security Score

Figure 5: CDW-G Cyber-Security Score, Craft.co

CDW-G is rated on Craft.co as top A on cyber-security to prevent any breeches thanks to many of the
partner available to cater to the government branches to prevent any data breeches and spills as the
government entity value their security of their data centers and will be on top of updating as frequently as
possible. Many of the account representatives that I have spoken to under my supervisor have mentioned
that they sell more cyber-security than any other products to help the federal keep as confidential as
possible.

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Figure 6: Brand Ambassador, Gary Woodland, an American Professional Golfer

Figure 7: Brand Ambassador, Gary Woodland, an American Professional Golfer, in the PGA Tour.
https://www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/pga-tour-sponsorship.html

Golfing is an American pastime than many businesses professional play and watch. Having Gary
Woodland as a brand ambassador is a huge marketing step for CDW to be shown and displayed
to others for encouraged business.

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