Cotner Heads Wyle's e-Business Group

Electronic News, April 17, 2000

Wyle Electronics, Irvine, Calif, a member of the Veba Electronics Group, found its new director of e-business within its own ranks. Penny Cotner formerly was director of marketing for two of Wyle's suppliers--Agilent Technologies Inc. and Conexant Systems Inc. In her six-year career with Wyle, she also acquired a solid engineering background and a thorough knowledge of customer-related issues, experience that fits seamlessly with Wyle's value-added e-distribution philosophy. Cotner will report to Simon Biddiscombe, senior vice president, chief financial officer, and chief operating officer.

"What has always driven me in this business is the propensity for change. No piece of the industry is moving as rapidly as the e-commerce is," said Cotner. "My greatest challenge is to be ahead of the changes, to take our company from where it is now and propel it ahead of coming transformations."

Cotner is replacing David Oppenheimer, former director of business development, in some of the areas that he used to cover. "But my group and I will focus on the e-business portion of future developments," she noted, "covering it from a demand-creation, sales-support services, and supply-chain management standpoint."

Wyle's e-business model, Cotner explained, differs from other emerging business-to-businesses', that mostly focus on part quoting. "The entrance of each new offering shifts where traditional distributors can offer value. Here at Wyle, we don't have a traditional distribution model, so it affects us slightly differently. Our company's e-business environment is oriented toward demand-creation. That is where we expect to take on a leadership role."

Becoming a 100 percent online company, which Cotner admits is a hard-to-define concept, is somewhat of a moving target, she said. Implementing new methods and embracing new Internet-related technology is a perpetual process and that makes it hard to predict when a company will really attain its goal, she said.

"At this point, Wyle has a hybrid model; we have Internet capability but not all our customers are utilizing it yet. We have electronic-order capabilities as well as more unique services such as our End of Life capabilities, which allows Wyle to alert customers of obsolete products. In order to expand and better our services, we need to get our arms around everything that is going on in the industry right now, which is extremely challenging since it changes every five minutes or so," Cotner said, laughing. "Another thing that we are doing, and this is probably the most critical part, is including our customers and suppliers in an exchange with our internal workforce to find out what their needs are. Our goal is to become an online problem solver, not just a provider of order services."

What Wyle's customers are asking for is ease of business. They want to be able to access Wyle's and the supplier's information quickly with a minimum of IT development or investment on their part.