The Soft Pitch

It used to be that that quote “Good things come in small packages” made me think of the ruby bracelet my husband bought me for our 10^th wedding anniversary. Nowadays I veer off to thoughts of an iPod Shuffle the size of lapel pin or my newest toy, a Flip Mino HD.  I decided to give it a try and jump into video blogging after I heard Brad Whitworth from Cisco talk about how the ease of use convinced a top Cisco executive to blog for employees and customers using it.

 My first try? Definitely shaky cam style. I used it to interview the judges for the Avnet Marketing and Communications Awards.  I haven’t heard of other companies doing this – but Avnet has been holding an internal awards competition for its marketing professionals for more than 10 years now.  It recognizes the best of our marketing efforts, but also encourages Avnet marketers to try new things and benchmark themselves against their colleagues globally.

 (Hold on there Avnet employees – I’m not giving away any secrets here of who won.  You’ll have to wait for the awards ceremony to learn that!)

I wanted to write about Avnet’s award for the “greening” of its data center, then I saw that one of our IT directors has written about it internally and he has provided a much better write up than I could – so this comes from Bruce Gorshe, IT Director – Data Center Operations.  The list of small and big things show, Kermit the Frog got it all wrong. It can be easy to be green, you just have to be a little bit innovative:

Green Computing, Energy Efficiency and the Data Center – Avnet won!

Avnet was selected as the winner of InfoWorld’s 2009 “Best Practices in Green Computing, Energy Efficiency and the Datacenter.”

Jennifer McConnell (Director, IT) accepted the award for Avnet at the “Storage Networking World” annual storage convention held in Scottsdale, Arizona. The award represented the cumulative efforts of multiple teams and demonstrates how Avnet is a leader in the Green IT space.

Jennifer McConnell Accepting SNW Award

The winning entry included these main points, specifically, Avnet:

• Consolidated more than 300 pieces of hardware by retiring or collapsing systems into larger vertically-scaled servers.
• Created a heavily virtualized environment with 24 VMware ESX hosts supporting 378 virtual guests
• Deployed 15 product AIX frames, representing 538 systems across only 39 physical systems.
• Installed StorageTek’s Virtual Storage Manager system to move a storage area network environment.
• Replaced older less efficient air conditioners with newer air conditioners, which were more power efficient.
• Re-foamed the ceiling of its datacenter roof and applied additional insulation.
• Installed “subzero” air flow leakage cubes and high-flow perforated tiles.
• Replaced 250 T12 lighting ballasts with more efficient T08 ballasts.
• Developed a script that would run on all desktop and laptop systems connected to the datacenter to automatically place idle systems in hibernation.

The gains from these changes included:

• Avoided spending more than $5 million to expand the power supply to its datacenter.
• Decreased power consumption by 44% per image through its vertical scaling and virtualization efforts. It also freed a considerable amount of valuable raised flooring space within Avnet’s datacenter. Avnet now has 5,000 square feet of available raised flooring, up from 1,000 square feet, allowing Avnet to avoid structural build-outs costs.
• The new room air conditioners are 20% more efficient.
• Re-foaming the datacenter ceiling and applying additional insulation lowered Avnet’s datacenter cooling costs by $7500 per year, and increased the longevity of the cooling systems and roof.
• The “subzero” air flow leakage cubes and high-flow perforated tiles helped improve air flow by 90%.
• The new power efficient lighting reduced related costs by 30%.
• By placing idle computers in hibernation during non-business hours, Avnet will save an estimated $150,000 annually. Also, it significantly reduced Avnet’s power consumption. A desktop PC consumes approximately 137 watts of electricity; however, by placing it in hibernation, it only consumes one watt.

Blogging from the cell block today … locked up for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

 I’m doing my best to raise money for MDA   and looking for a little help from my friends. 

The jailbird raising funds for MDA!

Believe me, there have been moments when I wondered why I agreed to this.  But now that I’m here talking to these kids, there’s no doubt.  Kids just want to be kids – even if they’re in wheel chairs or wearing braces.  I like knowing we’re helping them.  At camp, they can do what all kids do at camp – go horseback riding, crafts, roast marshmallows – they just need a little extra help in case they have medical emergencies.  That’s where MDA comes in.  In between calls, e-mails and tweets to raise money, I’m talking to staffers and listening to kids talk – they all say the same thing: Camp is the best week of their life!  Imagine that, helping someone to have the best week of their life. 

These are the times I’m proud to work for Avnet.  First for getting me involved (through Al – thanks), second for supporting me with taking the time to do this (thanks again) and for giving me wonderful connections to colleagues and friends willing to support me (thanks a third time).

No surprises here, though.  Avnet has long had a commitment to the communities we serve. It’s part of our culture and how we do business.  One of the things I learned a long time ago is that people don’t care how much you know or how much you do, until they know how much you care.  Care about their business.  Care about them as people.  Care about those around them.  Sure we make good, sound business decisions based on long-term strategy and the drive for results.  BUT, deep down we’re all human and we like to do business with people we like.  And at the end of the day, we’re all in this together, so if we can do a little something good to help the community along the way, GREAT!

 So, time for me to go back to fund raising for MDA and see if I can’t raise enough to send another kid to camp.  For every $800 I raise, another kid gets to roast marshmallows under the stars and make a sand candle.  Want to help?  Here’s the website to donate.

 And let me take a moment here to thank a lot of folks who have already donated: Gail, Al, Steve, Roy, Joal, CarolAnn, Chris, Jun, Michele, Charlie, Ed, Steve, Bret, Grant, Teri, MaryAnn, Sean, Kathy, Jan, Mark, Jim, Linda, Erin, Philip, Rick, Stephanie, Steve, Julie, Joal, Cheryl, Michaelle, Ed, Sonia, Jane.  Thanks to all!  I started off wondering how I was going to do this – and now together we’ve raised more than $5,000 so far.  Now I know how I’m going to do this.  With a little help from my friends.

I recently started subscribing to a blog about how to write a better blog (for those interested it’s Copyblogger and I find it interesting and instructive). The last post I read admonished bloggers to focus more on providing quality content and not be so self-promotional. A blog post should be like a gift, providing you something of value. Got me to thinking – are my post too promotional? Maybe, I always try to provide some insight into Avnet readers might not get otherwise, but since this is a corporate blog, it’s always about Avnet in some way.

I had planned on writing about Avnet’s new customer loyalty champion, Michelle Gardner, who recently took over the Customers Matter blog  and the Customers Matter Twitter account. I met with her the other day as we started talking about plans for communicating more with employees on customer service. I knew Michelle Gardner from before when she was focused on operational excellence. She’s intelligent, thoughtful and committed to enhancing the total “Avnet customer experience.” Now, I don’t know how much of a gift this is for you, but if you haven’t checked out her blog yet, you may find it interesting. She offers insight into great customer service, and she wants to hear directly from our customers and potential customers about what’s on their minds so she can build that into her plans. I can’t help but thinking her energy and enthusiasm is going to make a real difference.

I believe we’re going to see customer engagement really pick up momentum in the coming year. At all levels of the company, I hear Avnet employees and management talking about how to take the data from our customer surveys and turn it into specific actions to improve how we serve and engage individual customers.  Of course, it’s also one of those things that if you don’t play, you can’t win.  In other words, as with any survey, not everyone participates. But for those customers who do, it can make a real difference because our teams are listening carefully to what you say on those surveys to see if there are opportunities for us to do a better job for you – and of course we hope to win more of your business in the process. It’s a win-win proposition. So that’s my gift to you – check out her blog as Michelle has some good customer service info, and if you’re a customer, please take the survey when you get it so we can do a better job for you.

It’s the last day of our fiscal year, and I know all our teams are working hard to make it happen for their customers, suppliers and our shareholders.  The energy is high and quite frankly I’ve spent the last two weeks just trying to stay out of their way. So I haven’t asked for details on any new programs, gone looking for pictures of a community service project by one of our branches or even dug for a news scoop to share via this blog or Twitter. What am I doing?  Listening.

Listening to the rumblings across a global organization that shares a common goal – serve the customer the best we can.  Here’s what I’m hearing: there’s a new team in Thailand affectionately nick-named “The Magnificent Seven.”  It’s a small team focused on IT solutions – they made a sale the first day they opened their doors. Sounds like we’re ready to meet an unmet demand in that market.  There’s an effort in Europe to streamline how we go to market to make it easier for customers to buy. In Mexico, they’re getting ready to announce a new relationship (I can’t tell you who, because then I’d break the cardinal rule of letting them announce their own news).  But I can tell you they’re bringing on a new partner that will help them provide high availability and disaster recovery solutions to resellers. How do we make a decision to open a new office, sign a new supplier or change-up how we go to market? We listen to our customers – and not just once a year in a survey (even though we do that too), but all the time.

So while I’m listening to employees across Avnet, they are listening to their customers and their markets to make decisions on how to serve them better. One of the best pieces of parenting advice for those with teens I ever read basically said, if your teen wants to talk, no matter what you’re doing, stop and listen. It doesn’t matter if you’re too busy or are right in the middle of something. Stop and listen. Fifteen minutes later is too late, the moment will have passed and your teenager will be on to something else. I do it, it works with my teenage daughter. Sometimes I forget, but I always try.  Just the fact that I try on a consistent basis sends a huge message that I care. It’s the same with our customers. We listen when they’re ready, when they have something to say. There’s nothing more important because we certainly don’t have all the answers, so listening helps us make decisions.

We’re not perfect, but our research tells us that all other things being equal, more customers prefer to do business with Avnet.  I think it’s because we listen better.