The Journey of Transforming a Brand

Shownotes

In this episode of Sunny Side Up, host Andrew Smith talks with Andrea Winkle, a leader in the IT channel space and a 16-year veteran of Insight Enterprises. Andrea shares her journey of helping Insight transform from a reseller to a bold solutions integrator, as well as how their core values of Hunger, Heart, and Harmony have enabled them to become the leading solutions integrator for their customers.

She dives into the e-commerce transformation led by Amazon alum Rob Green, which enabled customers to have a consumer experience when purchasing for B2B. She also explains how Insight is adapting to the current economic climate to provide products and solutions that help simplify complex processes, cut costs, and remain innovative.

About the Guest

Andrea Winkle has 16 years of IT channel experience at Insight Enterprises, a Fortune 500 solutions integrator helping organizations accelerate their digital journey. She holds leadership roles in user experience, eCommerce, marketing operations, and digital marketing. Andrea currently leads marketing teams aligned with Insight’s technology and supply chain go-to-market, supporting key sales units and strategic partners through innovative marketing. Andrea is passionate about raising future leaders and devotes time as a peer mentor as well as speaking at various university organizations about leadership and career topics.

Connect with Andrea Winkle

Key Takeaways

• Insight transformed into a solutions integrator to meet the client’s expectations beyond procurement.
• Therefore, Insight created a positive brand identity. The company’s values of hunger, heart, and harmony were implemented internally, and the brand followed suit externally.
• Hunger is about ambition and delivering results for customers.
• The heart is about taking care of each other and showing compassion.
• Harmony is about valuing diversity and challenging thinking patterns.
• Insight’s values are often seen as an alignment with partners in the channel.
• Insight has evolved its business model to meet the needs of customers in a changing technology landscape.
• She combined technical expertise, hardware, software, and services capabilities with deep partnerships in the channel to simplify solutions.
• Values are a part of the brand to show customers that Insight is an authentic and relational company.
• Insight is adapting to current economic conditions and anticipated downturns by helping customers simplify the complex.
• Insight can pick up the slack on some of the processes companies had to let go of due to layoffs.

Quote

“As a brand, we want to prove that we can do more. We can help our customers do more”.

– Andrea Winkle

Highlights from the Episode

Please, share with our listeners a little bit about your background.

Andrea began her career in higher education, specifically focusing on K-12 outreach programs at the University of Arizona. Her work involved introducing children to careers in technology and business and emphasizing that attending university was achievable for them. Andrea also worked as a lecturer at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, where she taught the concept of Web 2.0 and engaging audiences through the internet. Her experience in user experience design started at this time, which eventually led her to Insight, where she has had the opportunity to transform and grow professionally over the past 16 years. At present, Andrea is responsible for demand generation for Insight’s technology partners, focusing on commercial public sector clients and enterprise technology clients. Her team executes integrated marketing programs, digital events, and PR flawlessly every day.

Can you get into a little bit more about how Insight is transforming?

Insight has undergone a significant transformation in recent years under the leadership of its marketing leader, Amy Protector. Before the brand transformation, Insight lacked a recognizable culture and was primarily known as a reseller. However, with the help of Amy, the company has crafted a bold new brand, positioning itself as a solutions integrator rather than a reseller. This transformation was driven by the recognition that their clients expected more from them than just procurement, and they wanted a single provider to handle all of their needs.

To achieve this transformation, Insight first focused on getting the right team in place and then looked internally to determine what changes were necessary to shift their culture. The company developed a set of values centered around Hunger, Heart, and Harmony, which served as the foundation for their internal shift. As the company’s strategy has evolved, so too has its brand, and Insight now focuses on being the leading solutions integrator for its customers. Overall, Insight’s transformation has been successful, driven by strong leadership and a commitment to delivering value to its clients.

Did something lead to Hunger, Heart, and Harmony becoming an internal culture shift?

The adoption of Hunger, Heart, and Harmony as Insight’s values was the result of surveying teammates on their values. At that time, the company had 15 value statements, but these three themes kept coming up repeatedly. Having a memorable and simple set of values that teammates could internalize and believe in was important. The alliteration of the three values starting with “H” made them easy for teammates to accept. Hunger represents what drives the organization and how they show up for customers, while Heart focuses on how they take care of each other and show compassion. Harmony, on the other hand, values diversity and differences in individuals and encourages challenging one’s own thinking patterns. Overall, the alignment of Insight’s values with their partners and the connection that they feel is a testament to the fact that Hunger, Heart, and Harmony are not just talked, about but are truly embedded in the company’s culture and how they show up every day as a brand.

How did it help you to mature the brand that is out there today and transform your brand? Where do you feel like you are on the journey?

Insight’s current journey is to become the leading solutions integrator. They recognize that businesses are at a critical inflection point, and their old model of being a sales-led organization with bundled products and services is no longer sufficient for meeting customer needs. With a new vision and a maturing brand, they are now in a category where they have access to incredible resources, technical expertise, and deep partnerships in the channel that help them to simplify complex issues and meet key business needs for their customers. Their brand’s goal is to prove that they can do more and help their customers achieve more, and their values showcase them as an authentic, relational company to their clients. In terms of their journey, they believe they are well on their way to achieving their goal of becoming the leading solutions integrator.

How did the statement enable Insight to mature its brand that we see today in that transformation that’s happened?

Insight was able to mature its brand through a combination of factors that included its evolution as a solutions integrator, its internal transformation efforts, and its focus on creating engaging e-commerce experiences. As a solutions integrator, Insight recognized the changing ways in which individuals consumed and relied on technology and worked to simplify solutions in modern apps, cloud services, infrastructure, data and AI, cybersecurity, and managed services. By combining its systems integrator capabilities with its history as a technology reseller, Insight was able to chart a new path for the technology industry and establish itself as a category of one.

In addition to this, Insight also looked internally and focused on transforming its business to better help organizations tackle their biggest challenges through the procurement and implementation of solutions and services. This transformation was supported by a brand evolution that clearly articulated to clients what Insight does and how it can help them.One area of significant change was Insight’s e-commerce transformation, led by Amazon alum Rob Green. As a UX designer, Andrea was responsible for working with the IT teams to create engaging experiences for customers. The expectations of customers in the B2B world have changed significantly over the past decade, and Insight recognized the need to create an e-commerce experience that matched the expectations of modern customers. With Rob Green’s help, Insight was able to create insight.com as a key differentiator in the marketplace, offering a user experience and functionality that matched what customers expect in their daily lives.

Can you share how Insight is adapting to the current economic conditions, given the anticipated downturn?

Insight is adapting to the current economic conditions by recognizing that its customers face unprecedented challenges. As a brand, they aim to simplify the complex and help their customers cut costs while also transforming. Insight offers products and solutions that prepare their customers for tomorrow so that when economic headwinds hit, they are poised and ready to go. The company emphasizes being ahead of the game by investing in the right tools and focusing on delivering the most value to its customers. For example, Insight’s digital marketing practice invested in a marketing stack and paired down to the essentials, allowing them to quickly pivot when Covid hit and help their partners get their products and services in front of customers.

Insight’s services organization was also ready to go with technology when the shift to remote work happened. Insight’s agility and ability to step in and meet their customers’ needs make them valuable partners, particularly for companies who have had to lay off employees and need to do more with less. Insight also explores how they can help companies automate processes to maintain the same value for their customers even when they’ve had to lay off teammates.

Is there a book, blog, newsletter, website, or video that you would recommend to our listeners?

Book

• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Shout-outs

Kate Mayer – Senior GTM & Revenue Marketing Leader at Insight Enterprises

Nidhi Tassone – Director of Commercial Marketing at Acer America Corp

Eren Hussein – US Field and Marketing Partner Leader at Apple Computer