compuBase consulting analysis of the age of managers in the IT channel

• It is important to bear in mind the average age of managers when it comes to negotiating transformation towards new concepts (the cloud, dematerialization, connected objects…)
   
• The older a manager is, the greater the risk of a company transfer or sale, which is of course a risk for all brands.
   
• However, to the credit of older managers, the structure of their organizations is generally more solid and their networks and market knowledge are superior.

We know that the age of a distribution network is a strategic element in a distribution policy. Large manufacturers of office equipment are currently experiencing the danger of seeing their faithful, but older partners being taken over by a competitor through a change of management or a merger with another structure.

This led us to compare the age of management within large brands’ channel partner networks to see if there are any notable differences between them.

As an example, we compared the ages of managers in the 20 largest distribution networks in France in the compuBase database.

The first thing we notice is that overall the graph is coherent in the form of the curves produced, peaking at between 50 and 54 years of age, with an average age of 51 years and 2 months. No distribution network has a graph that is totally different from the other brands. For all brands the manager’s experience ensures the network’s success.
However, there are differences in the average age of managers depending on the brands distributed. Within the top 20 largest networks, the maximum difference recorded is of 2 years and one month, that is to say that the average age of the oldest distribution network management, Sage (52 years 11 months) is 2 years and 1 month higher than the youngest, Netgear whose managers are on average 50 years and 8 months old.
If we extend the panel to include the 43 top networks the difference widens to 5 years and 3 months between Oracle (54 years and 8 months) and Kaspersky (49 years and 5 months).


Below is the average age of managers for the 20 top distribution networks (in terms of the number of partners referenced by compuBase) in France.

 

Brand	Average age of manager
Oracle	54	years	8	months
Novell	53	years	9	months
Minolta	53	years	0	months
Sage	52	years	11	months
Corel	52	years	8	months
Intel Security - McAfee	52	years	7	months
Adobe	52	years	5	months
IBM	52	years	4	months
Oki	52	years	4	months
Lexmark	52	years	4	months
Kyocera	52	years	2	months
Fujitsu	52	years	2	months
Viewsonic	52	years	1	months
Toshiba	52	years	1	months
Microsoft	52	years	1	months
Sharp	52	years	0	months
Nec	52	years	0	months
Cisco	51	years	11	months
Trend Micro	51	years	11	months
Lenovo	51	years	11	months
Quantum	51	years	10	months
Panasonic	51	years	9	months
Symantec	51	years	8	months
Ricoh	51	years	7	months
Sony	51	years	5	months
Seagate	51	years	5	months
Samsung	51	years	5	months
Xerox	51	years	4	months
Epson	51	years	4	months
Sun	51	years	4	months
HP	51	years	4	months
Hitachi	51	years	4	months
D-link	51	years	0	months
Canon	50	years	10	months
Apple	50	years	10	months
Intel	50	years	8	months
Netgear	50	years	8	months
Brother	50	years	8	months
Panda	50	years	3	months
3com	50	years	2	months
Acer	50	years	2	months
Dell	50	years	0	months
Kaspersky	49	years	5	months

 

This difference can be shown in terms of the deviation from the median (the panel consisted of 4681 companies representing 43 brands)

IT channel statistics
Test our online data access for free
Options for online access to the database
compuBase data marketing services
Resources for IT channel managers
 

Information request