Fare Elettronica interviewed CONSYSTEM’s General Manager David Ponzecchi to get a better understanding of the company’s philosophy and, together, gain a perspective on how the electronics market is evolving and the role of the distributor in the current context.
Here is what he told Fare Elettronica’s editorial staff, between visions and strategies.
What are your goals and strategies for 2023/2024?
CONSYSTEM has a clear and ambitious vision of its role in the specialized electronic component distribution market. We want to be the go-to partner for our customers, offering them innovative, customized and quality solutions. To do this, we rely on two fundamental pillars: actively listening to their needs and having an in-depth knowledge of the sector’s technologies, trends and dynamics.
In this sense, for the coming year we have identified some strategic areas where we want to continue investing to strengthen our presence: E-mobility (with particular attention to the world of electric vehicle charging) and the Defense field, as well as specific market niches where we are well established thanks to effective, integrated phygital communication between our sales and marketing teams.
In these areas we are able to offer specific and innovative products that allow our customers to create competitive and attractive solutions for end users, capable of breaking down technological and usage barriers to entry.
But we don’t stop there: we also have the strategic goal of growing through an acquisition that will allow us to expand our customer portfolio and enter new market segments. In addition, we are always looking for new suppliers who share our specialist sales philosophy based on relationships of trust and long-term collaboration.
“Your local partner specialist”. What message does this slogan capture?
Our payoff sums up the essence of the company: we are not an ordinary electronic component distributor, but we represent, for our customers and suppliers, a highly specialized partner, their local point of reference for the supply of niche electronic components. This is where our value proposition comes from.
Local: «The secret of business is knowing something nobody else knows».
Thanks to our corporate culture, thirty years of market knowledge, the team’s technical capability and close cooperation with our partner suppliers, we offer specialized technical support and specific products for every need (with the possibility of custom requests to our suppliers), covering the entire Italian territory.
Partner: «Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, working together is success».
We believe in the value of partnership. For over 30 years we have built long-term relationships with both suppliers and customers.
Specialist: «To each their own trade».
We believe in skills and specialization, offering customers the support of technically qualified specialists who are in direct contact with suppliers.
What features and added value do customers recognize in you? And suppliers?
We are proud to be a company that combines the best of two worlds: on one hand, we have the size, structure, professionalism, solidity, prestige and credibility that allow us to interact with any type of customer and to have privileged relationships with our suppliers; on the other hand, we have the leanness, speed, agility, flexibility, responsiveness and accessibility that make us capable of quickly adapting to market needs and offering customized, quality solutions. This is our strength, which makes us stand out in today’s competitive landscape.
Another strength that sets us apart – on the supplier side – is our niche component sales approach, which allows us to avoid any overlap between our partners’ offerings.
For us there is no standard catalogue, what exists are our customers’ specific needs and our specialists, able to find the most suitable solutions for them, drawing on a selected and diversified portfolio of suppliers that, thanks to strong and lasting partnerships, guarantee qualified technical support as well as the ability to develop custom solutions and ad-hoc logistics actions.
What services are customers requesting most from you at the moment?
The requests we receive from our customers are increasingly demanding and diverse. Among the most common are:
– greater flexibility in delivery and logistics,
– increasingly specialized technical expertise,
– support and assistance at every stage of the sales process,
– product customization,
– practical product demonstrations, with the possibility of “hands-on” experience.
How do you tackle the challenges and difficulties that your customers (and SMEs in general) have to overcome at the moment?
We are aware that we operate in a context of great uncertainty, which can be summed up with the acronym V.U.C.A. (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity). An uncertainty that in our sector – so essential for the development of the country’s economic system, yet so often underestimated – manifests itself in various ways and is made worse by the lack of a strategic development vision at the national and European political level.
A significant difficulty is everything that, on the distributor side, translates into requests to renegotiate deliveries and/or cancel orders. For some products, issues related to lead times and shortages still persist, transport costs have increased… and the real problem is then how to manage all of this.
For our part, we try to tackle these challenges with excellent planning and organization of internal processes, supported by synergy between the various functions (thanks to shared periodic meetings together with precise, timely and careful internal communication and specifically developed digital tools) along with a great capacity for adaptation and resilience to the current times, in order to continue – in a reasonable and sustainable way – to be our customers’ trusted partner, supporting them in such difficult and challenging times.
At a general, industry-wide level, coordinated actions would be needed, for example on issues such as debt collection, credit support, or a strong and cohesive “institutional” communication about the sector’s problems. Certainly, some progress has been made, partly thanks to Assodel (editor’s note: the Italian Electronics Districts association), but there is still a lot to do.
What is, and what should be, the role of the distributor in the supply chain of the future?
As I said before, from a political standpoint there is currently no clear strategy for the industrial sector in Italy. So, in my view, the real question is: what will the future of Italian and European industry look like?
Certainly, there will be increasing demand for high-value-added, reliable components and solutions that are also “on time” both in terms of supply and reducing time-to-market (the ready-to-use concept is somewhat a summary of this). This fits well with CONSYSTEM’s corporate philosophy: we don’t want to compete on pricing policies but want to continue being the local partner specialist in well-defined verticals, today as tomorrow.
Which technologies will have the greatest impact on the market, and in which application areas do you see the greatest growth?
Speaking of technologies I would certainly say SiC and GaN, high-frequency Radar and AI integrated into components (e.g. SOMs with neural networks, Radar sensors…). While the application area where we have witnessed, and continue to witness daily, exponential growth is Green Technology: E-mobility, hydrogen, renewables.
In these sectors, we see greater growth both in terms of volumes and value, and we are ready to seize the opportunities that will arise.
These technological trends also feed the growth project that CONSYSTEM – following its philosophy of “Cathedral thinking” of the medieval master builders – cultivates every day, monitoring technological evolution and market developments.
In order to continue offering high-value-added solutions and support to its customers, today and especially tomorrow, with investment and vision.