Meet the Team: Andrew Upshon, Head of AV

Meet Andrew Upshon, your go-to expert in AV and Collaboration, specialising in modern meeting room solutions. With extensive knowledge of Microsoft Teams Rooms systems at Dicker Data, Andrew has seen the growing popularity of AV and collaboration solutions in offices and meeting rooms. 

“There has been a lot of change in the AV market, especially the convergence and growth of the Cloud based UC and Video Conferencing through the AV channel, but at its core our partners want people to really care about them and their customers businesses, and they want speedy responses. We consider partners an integral part of our business. We help them understand the best solutions for their opportunities in a time poor world and add true value to their sales process.”  

Not many people can say they’ve worked in IT Distribution on three different continents, in three different countries. From South Africa to the United Kingdom, and to the land down under, Andrew is a global professional who’s carved out his own path in the IT Tech industry.  

“I got into the IT world by accident. I studied marketing in South Africa, and once I was finished, I worked in more traditional marketing jobs, then I found a role at an IT Distributor, where I started off in both product management & sales.”  

Andrew very much went with the flow, which eventually led him to identifying a gap in the market.  

“I enjoy the strategic and tactical side of business development and especially growing businesses that are underrepresented or have great potential for growth. The AV world was one I could make my mark on within the IT channel. AV products used to be sold through specialist partners using niche distributors, but I have been able to grow successful AV businesses within the IT distribution channel and nowadays IT distributors have a large portion of the AV supply chain locally and globally, it’s not a specialist distributors game anymore. Most AV and UC Collaboration products are sold by a mix of IT & AV resellers, they are essentially network devices, that often have pc in their ecosystems. So, ‘AV through IT’ became part of my signature, or my specialty.”  

Andrew’s now been in the IT Tech industry for over 25 years, 5 of which he’s spent here at Dicker Data.  

“Having worked at several different distributors around the world, in various management capacities, it's quite easy to pick up on whether a company has a good culture. Dicker Data has a great culture and a real essence of team spirit. In distribution we are neither the manufacturer nor the reseller, we are in the middle and the connection between the vendor and the reseller is people. Having a great team, who want to get things done together, which is a good foundation to build a business on.”  

 Andrew’s favourite part of the job is by far engaging with our partners and vendor community.  

“It’s the variety I enjoy, I get to deal with lots of different vendors and lots of different partners, in a highly dynamic and fast changing part of the business. It’s also great working with a group of talented and enthusiastic people, who help us get stuff done!”  

Outside of work, you'll often find Andrew out on the water with his paddleboard. When he's in work mode, Andrew is your go-to expert for leveraging the extensive AV and Collaboration knowledge, especially in modern meeting room solutions such as the range of Microsoft Teams Rooms systems available at Dicker Data.  

Get in touch with Andrew and our team here.