One of KOcycle’s most experienced employees has reflected on how the opportunity to turn technology into a force for good inspired her to change career lanes.
Claudette Gray spent more than 30 years working in sales roles for various resellers and MSPs, namely Inmac, Systemax, CCS Media, Insight and CAE.
Now she evangelises IT lifecycle services to the very firms she used to work for.
In her role as Channel Account Manager for KOcycle, Gray looks after a small handful of channel partners including Insight, Advania and Xeretec.
“It’s a little bit of an education journey. While a lot of our partners know of IT asset disposition (ITAD) services, they sometimes don’t really have a full grasp on their actual impact,” she said.
“The most rewarding thing about the role is helping our partners win net new clients just by having conversations about lifecycle services.”
KOcycle comes knocking
Sustainability wasn’t on clients’ radar in 1987 when Gray landed her first role in the channel (as a telesales supervisor at Inmac).
“It was all about speed, margin and volume,” she recalled.
Under a gradual shift over the next few decades, customers began to care more about cost and energy usage, she said.
“From 2020 onwards, sustainability became more central due to regulation, customer demand and corporate ESG goals,” Gray reflected.
Against this backdrop, Gray was more than receptive when an old graduate mentee of hers – Oli Mason – came knocking with a proposition to join KOcycle. He founded the Braintree-based IT lifecycle services outfit in 2018 after spotting that the ITAD space was “ripe for disruption”.
“I’d been in the IT industry for many years selling IT in all its guises,” Gray recalled.
“The fact that I could possibly see out the latter years of my career turning technology into a force for good – it just couldn’t get better than that.”
KODI conversation starter
Gray flagged up KOcycle’s new digital inclusion initiative, KODI, as one of her key conversation starters.
It is designed to rip up the ITAD rulebook by making it quick and easy for organisations to donate used devices to charities and then measure the social impact.
“That’s got to be at the forefront of all the conversations we undertake,” Gray said.
“With the significant digital divide we’ve got in the UK alone, it was a no-brainer for me to join the mission.”
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This article was produced in association with KOcycle and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
