The tech wingback

AS CEO and co-founder of the US$13 billion World Wide Technology (WWT), Jim Kavanaugh has come a long way in life, having grown up as the son of a bricklayer in St Louis, on the banks of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the United States. The tech leader - who used to be a professional soccer player - now has a net worth of around US$2 billion.

He still lives in St Louis as the company, which has a global presence, is headquartered in the city that is better known for baseball, beer and its famous arch. St Louis' craze for baseball stands in stark contrast to Mr Kavanaugh's own passion - football or soccer as it is called in the US. He was a member of the US national soccer team during his playing days. The WWT CEO believes that his love for and lessons from the game played an important part in shaping the person he is today; more on that later.

WWT - co-founded in 1990 by David Steward and Mr Kavanaugh - provides IT and supply chain solutions as a value-added reseller of products and services. Mr Steward is currently the chairman of WWT. On his part, Mr Kavanaugh was ranked ninth among the top 25 highest rated US CEOs for their leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to employee feedback on Glassdoor.

Unlike the founders of many iconic technology companies, Mr Kavanuagh and Mr Steward didn't start out as gee-whiz technology geeks. As the WWT CEO explains in a video interview, the company's success is based more on the sharp business sense and foresight of the two partners that allowed them to differentiate the company from countless other tech product resellers.

With work from home (WFH) becoming the norm throughout 2020, WWT has had a busy year, says Mr Kavanaugh. WWT operates in an industry that has the tools required by businesses to transition to a WFH environment, he adds. "Covid-19 has accelerated the digitalisation of businesses and for creating systems like voice-video collaboration. Fortunately, we did lean in into these specific areas that customers need and spent a lot of time, effort and focus to be able to deliver these to them," he notes.

Speaking of his own experience in managing Covid-19 and its impact, Mr Kavanaugh shares that the WWT management tried to learn from what other organisations and countries are doing to handle the pandemic. "I think, for example, Singapore has done an excellent job in managing Covid-19. Similarly, I don't think the US has been doing a good job," he adds.

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Mr Kavanaugh concurs with various research reports and observations that suggest the pandemic has hastened the adoption of digital technologies by several years. "While there are different opinions as to how many years we have leapfrogged in terms of adoption, I think the pandemic has certainly accelerated the need for digitalising businesses in order to keep them from going under. In some cases, it has been almost black and white; if you don't digitalise you go out of business."

Jersey Mike's

He shares an interesting customer example. "We have been working closely with Jersey Mike's, a maker of sub sandwiches in the US, from about six to nine months before the pandemic started. They have hundreds of retail outlets around the country and when they came to us, they wanted to double, triple or quadruple the number of shops and take the brand global.

"WWT started working with them to digitalise their business and create mobile applications that would help in kerbside pick-ups and other such IT initiatives. When the pandemic hit, we accelerated our collaboration and that put them in a position where, when the shops shut down and patrons were not able to make walk-in purchases, they were still able to continue their sales through their mobile application and through other digital channels," Mr Kavanaugh says.

Despite the pandemic, the submarine sandwich chain has seen a significant growth in business, he notes. "Jersey Mike's told us that they have saved thousands of jobs since, if they hadn't digitalised, they would have had to lay off a large portion of their workforce due to lack of sales."

Another area where Covid-19 and digitalisation is having a massive impact is in healthcare, Mr Kavanaugh says. The pandemic is forcing governments and countries to change policies with regard to how doctors and medical practitioners operate in a virtual environment. "The pandemic has accelerated policy-making required for leveraging technology, and what could have taken five to 10 years has been achieved in three to six months," he notes.

"In some way, I see policies and bureaucracies changing because they need to because the pandemic has forced their hand."

Asked if he thinks remote working will remain after the pandemic is over, Mr Kavanaugh says there are various opinions and perspectives on this. "I have talked with a number of executives and CEOs and there are some who are a bit 'old school' and feel everybody needs to be in the room in person and I think that the current situation has caused them to change their mindset. Going forward, there's going to be some (organisations) that are going to feel they need to have everyone come to the office.

"However, I'm also confident that for a large number of other organisations, it is not going to be exactly where we are today with regard to remote workers (100 per cent telecommute) but rather a hybrid environment (a combination of remote workers and in-office workers) as we come out of the pandemic.

"As we work with customers to deploy technology, we feel that there will be policy changes that will allow much more flexibility with regard to workers' preferences, either in terms of coming to work or working remotely."

Mr Kavanaugh notes that both within WWT and among customers, many employees are saying they don't believe that they would ever need to go back to the office. "They are saying, 'I feel content and productive working at home because I'm saving anywhere from 45 mins to an hour-and-a-half on my commute time to office and the same coming back from office. I can be much more productive working from home and the quality of work life is much better'," says the CEO.

He adds that what this will lead to is the creation of more nimble and agile workforces which will create a cost-effective business structure as there will be physical facilities that would eventually be either used differently or be jettisoned off over time.

Economic recovery

Mr Kavanaugh is optimistic that economic recovery post-pandemic will be quick. "There is a pent-up demand, call it animal spirits. Situations like this cause individuals to reflect and look at life in a new way. They appreciate life differently, and people from different parts of the world, different cultures, different backgrounds and time zones, are connecting as if they are all sitting in the same room. There is pent-up energy to do great things and take advantage of the opportunities we have as human beings living and prospering," he says.

He believes there will be a massive multiplier effect on business growth for firms in IT-related industries due to largescale technology adoption. "The pandemic has triggered in people's minds the idea that if you're not a digital business or even a (digital) country, you're going to get passed by. You have to have a mind-set of innovation and also be willing to cannibalise some of the things you have been doing till now while looking forward to the future.

"There is going to be an acceleration of digital businesses and I think countries and companies that can create these collaborative innovative ecosystems that foster that kind of environment, are going to be the biggest beneficiaries," says the WWT CEO.

Mr Kavanaugh reminiscences about his remarkable journey from a "labour-focused" family background to a technology leader today. "I played soccer and that got me a college scholarship and led me to playing for the US Olympic teams in 1983 and 1984. I had unbelievably good fortune, as before joining the team I had never travelled. At 19 years of age, I was able to travel the world and go to Korea, Malaysia, China, Germany and Central American countries, Caracas in Venezuela. I got an opportunity to see different things that I never had any insight of," he recalls.

When they set up WWT, "I really had no idea what I was doing", recalls Mr Kavanaugh who was 28 when he and Mr Steward, 12 years his senior, formed the company. They started off by selling computers and printers to telecom companies like AT&T. Mr Kavanaugh personally fulfilled one of the company's first orders by renting a truck and transporting 500 PCs from St Louis to Omaha in the state of Nebraska, a distance of around 700 km.

Recalling those early days, Mr Kavanaugh says that in the first five years or so "we could have and should have gone out of business probably 20 different times" because "we were always trying to figure out things". However, "we slowly started getting our legs and over time we realised we couldn't just resell products", he adds.

"We understood that we had to add value to the products we were selling by doing something different from our competition. That is when we decided to build our Advanced Technology Centre (ATC), which started with just one rack of equipment. The idea was to build a technology ecosystem and platform by leveraging equipment from all of our big technology partners. Our idea was that the ATC could be used by any of our customers to test out their requirements. So, we built on that and had the belief that even without the centre generating any revenue or being unable to quickly monetise the platform, it provided value," he tells BT.

Today the ATC - a physical campus of buildings and labs that has been dubbed a tech Mecca in America's heartland, and which has been virtualised and made accessible around the world - is one of WWT's unique value propositions. Almost all top technology equipment and software vendors have a presence there; using the ATC, customers looking to outfit multibillion corporations with the right IT products can configure systems from different vendors and see which set works best for them.

WWT is looking at Asia as the next big growth market. The company has its Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. "We are continuing to put resources in different geographical locations in Asia, whether it is specifically in Singapore, Japan, China and India," Mr Kavanaugh says.

Playing football

The WWT CEO fondly remembers his playing days. "I was a defender for the most part, with a little bit of playing in mid-field. The issue I had - and I do have a laugh on this today - is I always got into trouble with coaches because as a wingback I loved to move forward and attack. Coaches would tell me to stay back but they loved it when I attacked.

"When I look at how football is played today, wingbacks are attacking all the time. That's what I love about the game, the ability to move forward and attack. The forwards I used to play against, never wanted to chase me because all they wanted to do is go forward and not chase an attacker!"

Talking about his biggest learning from the game, Mr Kavanaugh says many of the values that make a good football player and a football team are very relevant and transferable to the world of business.

"Some of them are discipline, rigour, work ethic, and team orientation. Another really important one, which applies both to a young age and even in business, is how do you deal with constructive input?

"Do you embrace constructive input? Because by doing so you get better. This applies to both young kids as an athlete, and I've coached different teams, as well as to grown men and women. If you get irritated and don't want constructive input, you're never going to get better. These things that make a great player and also a great and high performing team - they absolutely apply to the world of business," says Mr Kavanaugh.

Another takeaway that applies to both sport as well as business is that you have to accept that you will have ups and downs, and you've got to be able to fight through the times you are down, he adds.

"If you can build a mindset of resilience and still have a positive attitude, be willing to take constructive input and work through the tough times with a level of grit and determination, that is really an incredible differentiator in both sports and business," Mr Kavanaugh adds. Going by how his company has emerged stronger during this pandemic, it's apparent that the WWT CEO is walking the talk and scoring well.

JIM KAVANAUGH

CEO and co-founder World Wide Technology

1963: Born in St Louis, Missouri, US

1986: BA in Marketing, St Louis University

1988-1990: Sales Manager, Future Electronics

1990: Co-founded World Wide Technology (WWT)

1990-1999: President, WWT

Since 2002 : CEO, WWT

Soccer credentials:

1984: US Olympic men's team

1986-1987: Los Angeles Lazers, Major Indoor Soccer League