Tampa Tribune (Florida), October 26, 2006, Thursday

Copyright 2006 The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune
Tampa Tribune (Florida)

October 26, 2006 Thursday

FINAL EDITION

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: New Tech Data CEO Has Vision For The Future

BYLINE: RICHARD MULLINS, The Tampa Tribune

BODY:
HE WANTS COMPANY TO REACH ;NEXT LEVEL'
By RICHARD MULLINS
The Tampa Tribune
CLEARWATER - Meet Bob Dutkowsky. Fan of Chicago-style pizza. A former college baseball pitcher with a good fastball. And the new chief executive officer of the Tampa Bay area's largest company - the Clearwater computer distributor Tech Data Corp.
Dutkowsky, 51, started the job Oct. 2, leading a company with about $20 billion in sales. He took over for Steven Raymund, who had run it since 1986. For three weeks, Dutkowsky has been on a whirlwind tour to meet everyone he physically can - customers big and small, computer suppliers and employees around the world. At one point a week ago, he just walked into the Tech Data cafeteria and stood there to answer questions, shake hands and chat about sports.
"People waited an hour to come shake my hand," he says, chuckling. "I would not wait an hour to shake my hand, but people wanted to say 'Welcome,' which is nice. I've been in companies that are not like that."
When he's not at work, Dutkowsky is helping unpack at the new condo he and his wife, Lorraine, bought on the 15th floor of a Bayshore Boulevard condo tower. Moving to Tampa is their 14th corporate relocation, and hopefully the last for a long time. Lorraine is a passionate volunteer organizer and philanthropist who is looking for her next big project, he said.
"My wife is a saint, but she is also finished moving," he said, joking. "She made it very clear, this is it. We are going to love Tampa."
So far, Dutkowsky likes what he sees at Tech Data. The company's purpose is to act as kind of massive computer catalog company, stocking and re-selling billions of dollars worth of PCs, Internet servers, printers, cell phones and even iPods. It's where big companies like BestBuy actually buy their computer equipment.
Familiar Territory
Selling computers is familiar territory for Dutkowsky. His first real job (besides an usher at a local movie theater) was at IBM selling computers in the 1970s in Rochester, N.Y. He took to sales almost by accident. As a senior at Cornell University, he had accidentally accepted two jobs at IBM Corp. - one in human resources, the other in sales. One day, the phone rang in his fraternity room and an upset IBM recruiter called to make him chose just one job.
"He asked what I wanted to be when I grow up," Dutkowsky said.
At the time, Dutkowsky was pitcher on Cornell's baseball team - a fastball specialist.
"I could throw a marshmallow through a brick wall. I just didn't know where it was going to go," he jokes.
He liked how the whole game sat in his hands. Until he threw the ball, nothing happened.
"Early on, I never minded having the ball in my hand, and sitting in the CEO chair, you better want the ball in your hand," he said.
So he told the recruiter, "I'm a baseball player. But I want to be CEO of IBM." So he says, "Start off in sales, because every CEO of IBM had started in sales.'"
His father worked 44 years at IBM, many of them building the world's first business computers. Now Dutkowsky had to convince small companies to buy their first-ever computers to take over the handwritten accounting that had run companies for time immemorial.
He made his first sale to a lumber company called Large Killday. And he did it for six years. Luckily, a boss in Rochester spotted some potential in Dutkowsky and put him on a training track that moved him from city to city, job to job. "Promoted and moved, Promoted and moved," he said.
In a career that included IBM, EMC and several other tech companies, Dutkowsky moved his family 14 times.
The good news is that Dutkowsky likes most of what he's heard since starting his listening tour. He's met with the CEOs of major tech companies - IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox - and he says they've all told him how Tech Data plays a critical role in getting their products to market.
"How you take a mainframe to market is different than an iPod," Dutkowsky said. "And Tech Data is in a strategic middle place for them to get those to market cheaply, and to people they could not reach profitably, like small business."
The best news, Dutkowsky said, is what he has not heard. No spooky tips about corrupt accounting practices, nothing about fudged stock options, nothing about anyone stealing from the company or customers. And that's even through the anonymous "Ask Bob" e-mail address he keeps for employee tips and questions.
The only surprises have been how quickly the big strategic decisions have come - because the end of year tends to be "big decision" season, he said. Although he can't be specific, Dutkowsky said such choices will help the company accelerate growth and diversify its position in the market.
Improving In The Market
Meanwhile, he said Tech Data absolutely must improve its execution and speed in the market.
That message came loud and clear just before Dutkowsky joined Tech Data after a string of tough financial quarters. Profits fell, and for a distributor that runs with razor-thin margins in the best of times, that is tough to correct.
"When you're a distribution company, all you do is buy, sell and ship. There are dozens of processes to do it, and we need to improve all those executions … and do that with a sense of urgency," he said. "When you sell $20 billion dollars worth of stuff in 222 working days - there it is, the field of play. We have to do it faster, more efficiently and with more sense of urgency."
A New Style Will Emerge
Dutkowsky said his work style will be different from Raymund. (Even though Dutkowsky is in Raymund's old office at his old desk).
"Steve grew up here - it was the only job he's ever had and he started here when it had a dozen employees," Dutkowsky said. "Steve has probably forgotten more about distribution than I'll ever know. My job is not to duplicate that, but find out how to take my skills and add value to the team and take it to the next level."
Those skills include operating in vastly sophisticated companies where complex problems are all in a day's work. That comes in handy, he said, when big changes must be made, and he learned a lot about doing that while working directly for the famous IBM CEO Lou Gerstner.
"One day working with Lou, he said, 'I feel like I'm in a battleship, and even if I yell, Stop! Reverse engines! The ship still goes on for a mile,'" Dutkowsky remembers. "A big organization like Tech Data has momentum, and you can think you've moved it, but it's still going on in another direction."
And that is just where Tech Data's biggest problem lies - specifically in Europe. Tech Data let go several mangers, and the president of the European division spent all last week in Clearwater going over strategies.
"It's going to take some time to put Europe in the fighting condition that we want it to be," he said. "But it clearly will get there."
Dutkowsky sums up Tech Data's goals, comparing it to the New Hampshire license plate motto: "Live Free Or Die." With business, he said, it's "Grow Profitably Or Die."
(CHART) WHAT ELSE ABOUT BOB
COLLEGE: Cornell University, focus on labor and industrial relations
PARENTS' JOBS: Dad worked 44 years with IBM, including at a factory making computers and printers in Endicott, N.Y. Mom was a homemaker.
FIRST JOB: Usher in movie theater when in high school. First post-college job: IBM computer salesman, Rochester, N.Y.
FAVORITE FOOD: Pizza. Friday night has been pizza night his entire marriage.
FAVORITE VACATION CITY: Hilton Head, S.C., where he owns a vacation home and where cellular service is mercifully poor.
FAVORITE BAND: Chicago. Dutkowsky took his future wife to a concert on one of their first dates.
FAVORITE TECHIE GADGET: The new "Pearl" Blackberry phone-DA by T-Mobile
WORLD SERIES PICK: "That's way too hot of a question. Half my family are Detroit Tigers fans; the other are St. Louis Cardinals fans. I'll pick the Cards. Now I'm in trouble."
Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919.
Photo credit: Tribune photo by MARK GUSS
Photo: The move to Tampa is the 14th corporate relocation for Dutkowsky. He said he wants to accelerate the growth of the company.
Photo: Bob Dutkowsky is the new CEO of computer distributor Tech Data Corp.
Copyright © 2006, The Tampa Tribune and may not be republished without permission. E-mail library@tampatrib.com

GRAPHIC: PHOTO 2 CHART