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


Why does age matter?

  • 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.

Who is oldest in the distribution channel?

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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)
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