Anglia Components’ CEO, Steve Rawlins, says strong inventory, good people and innovation will be central to realising opportunities in 2023
The global economic slowdown has reduced demand for consumer electronics, smartphones and PCs. This will impact lead times for industrial components, but truthfully, the position won’t improve in the short to medium term. Customers whose design is six-months away from market realisation still need to be placing production orders for the bill-of-materials as soon as possible.
Of course, the investment risk when placing firm orders for components to fulfil demand that is hard to forecast is considerable. Distributors like Anglia have a significant role to play in helping manage that risk. By combining the customer’s understanding of their end market with Anglia’s considerable expertise of the electronic component industry, the ever-shifting supply chain can be successfully navigated. This expertise is instantly accessible to customers through Anglia Live, as well as through dialogue with their individual field application engineers (FAEs) and key account managers (KAMs).
Those FAEs and KAMs, working alongside Anglia’s teams in purchasing, operations and warehousing, were key to the company’s success in 2022 and will continue to be key next year. One of the long-term impacts of Covid has been a complete reset of the expectations employees have of their employers. Work-life balance has always been important, but in an ever-tighter labour market, it has become essential that employers recognise this to attract the best and brightest. That’s why we’ll be closing early every Friday and offering all our staff better holidays in a major package of new benefits to take effect at the start of the New Year.
Innovation will be a third ingredient for success in 2023. Whilst it is something that everyone claims to do, not everyone does it successfully. The key is to look at what your customers need from you and make the changes, big or small, that will strengthen your relationship with them and help them. Very few people, even in January 2020, saw the pandemic coming—but past innovations put Anglia and its customers in the best possible position to weather this and subsequent storms together. We like to think that Anglia was a safe pair of hands for design engineers and purchasing teams seeking to navigate the supply chain difficulties brought by the pandemic. The Anglia Design Partner programme connected customers to much needed design resources when everyone was working from home.
Forecasting is even more difficult than usual in light of global uncertainties but the supply chain situation should ease. Market forecasts for next year are widely scattered, which shows how hard it is to call. Anglia has grown extremely rapidly and usually faster than the market, its prospects are as exciting today as they were 50-years ago when Anglia was established. During its 51st year it will be unveiling further exciting plans to expand the team, enhance its service and continue to grow its share of customers’ electronic component business.