Timothy McGrath
CEO / PC Connection, Inc.
Covered bridges, brilliant Fall foliage, and rushing streams: Merrimack, New Hampshire has plenty of natural wonders to beckon travelers from far and near. But that’s not all this town of 27,500 people in the Granite State has on offer. This is also headquarters for Connection, a 21st Century IT dynamo that has become a beacon in our era of information overload. “Our job is to calm the confusion of IT and hopefully guide the customer at a time when technology is growing more complex, more disruptive, yet more important than ever before.”
While you won’t find it on a New England postcard, spare a thought for this unassuming, low rise office complex half hidden along a sylvan drive 3,100 miles from Silicon Valley.
Connection is a hub for cutting-edge technology solutions and services for customers throughout the United States and beyond. The company makes no gadgets but designs rapid-response IT solutions for corporations, governments, and public institutions.
Serving enterprise, mid-market, and public sector organizations, the company offers hundreds of thousands of products through its seasoned staff of trained sales account managers, procurement platforms, and its website.
“We don’t manufacture technology, but we listen to our customers’ needs, help them design technology solutions, and provide the expertise and guidance to make it all work,” said McGrath.
“Since the beginning our value proposition has always been: We solve IT. But to deliver that level of service to our customers, we needed to shift from a transactional mindset to a transformational one. At Connection, we clearly have to continue to evolve and adapt.”
Connection’s customer outreach is coordinated through the company’s Technology Integration and Distribution Center (TIDC) out of Wilmington, Ohio, which McGrath calls “the epicenter for all of our managed services.”
The company deploys a nexus of some 1,600 strategic partners to deliver its services across the globe, with coverage spanning 174 countries.
Whether for business, government, healthcare, or the education markets, the company has earned a reputation as a leading information technology solutions provider.
Time Magazine last year touted Connection in its inaugural ranking of America’s Best Mid-Size Companies, a survey of all U.S. companies earning between $100 million and $10 billion in 2023 – 2024. Newsweek named it one of the world’s most trustworthy companies in 2024.
McGrath, who has served as Chief Executive Officer since 2011, says the accolades are the fruit of more than four decades of a customer-facing business strategy that thrives by anticipating the trends and quickly adapting to ever-changing – and often confounding – circumstances.
“Our success comes down to focusing on people,” said McGrath. “Exceptional customer service starts and ends with a partner who listens, understands, and wants to help.”
“We like to say change happens and expertise matters, but your people truly have to be experts to go execute that vision.”
In company parlance, Connection provides corporate technology buyers with “best-in-class” IT solutions, “supply-chain expertise,” and real-time access to some 460,000 branded products through MarkITplace®, a proprietary next-generation, cloud-based supply chain solution.
Their in-house teams of engineers, software licensing specialists, and subject-matter experts help reduce the cost and complexity of buying hardware, software, and services throughout the entire IT lifecycle—enabling Connection to serve as a trusted IT advisor, an extension of the customer’s own IT department.
Connection delivers its suite of IT wares and services to federal, state, and local government agencies and educational institutions through a cadre of specialized account managers, procurement contracts, and online at www.connection.com/publicsector.
It’s been quite the climb for the boutique startup founded in 1982 in a refurbished woodworking mill in Marlow, New Hampshire, a speck of a town with a population of 542.
The brainchild of Patricia Gallup and David Hall , two New Englanders who met at Bishbash Falls on the Appalachian Trail in the mid 1970s, the venture began as a mail order and catalog firm designed to help people connect with a revolutionary, new technology—the personal computer.
Drawing on the same shared values that cemented a lifelong friendship on that storied mountain trek, Gallup and Hall set out to change the way people bought technology. Using $8,000 of Gallup’s personal savings, they purchased inventory, placed a small ad in Byte Magazine, and held their breath. Three days later, the phone rang. It’s still ringing.
“When I think about our long-term strategies, we’ve always tried to differentiate ourselves from the competition by going above and beyond and truly deliver exceptional customer experiences. It’s what we’re known for.”
The founders remained close to the business throughout decades of transformational change, championing new technologies and inspiring the culture of innovation that drives Connection to this day. While David Hall passed away in 2020, Gallup continues to chair Connection’s board of directors.
The young business expanded rapidly, went public in 1988 and moved to Merrimack in 1998. In 2016, with Tim McGrath at the helm, the company rebranded as Connection, trading under the “CNXN” stock ticker on the Nasdaq exchange.
The Appalachians are in the rearview now, but over the last 43 years, the company has blazed a trail across the U.S. and a few continents besides. Soaring into the Fortune 1000 listings, McGrath’s team delivers advanced technology solutions and custom-configured computer systems overnight from its ISO 9001:2015 certified technical configuration lab at the TIDC in Wilmington, Ohio.
Company bona fides include more than 5,000 professional certifications that help ensure the team can solve the most complex technology and business challenges for today’s customers. McGrath takes the long view of the sprawling IT market, which he says is shifting shape at every turn.
“If you go back twenty years and look at the ten largest S&P 500 companies, only a couple of them were in the technology industry,” he told CEO-NA. “Today, seven of the top ten S&P 500 companies are in technology.”
“When you think about where we are in this market, we start by asking how relevant is technology to our world today? Every company regardless of the vertical market they’re in – healthcare, manufacturing, retail, finance, government – even though technology isn’t their main business, it becomes so relevant to everything they’re trying to do.”
“And finally, what I’d say is we truly believe that we’re here today, 43 years later, because our founding principle was to offer the best customer service in our industry, and we believe that we do that.”
To hit paydirt, Connection kept close tabs on the needs and challenges of its client base. “We were watching our customers and organizations struggle with unprecedented levels of complexity, just an explosion of data, and of course, the ever-evolving cybersecurity threats,” he said.
“I knew Connection had the expertise. I knew we had the resources, the people, the trusted partnerships to help.” That assessment led to a pivot in the business model. “Instead of merely providing end-user devices and peripherals, as we did in the early days as PC Connection, we’ve evolved into Connection,” McGrath explained.
More than corporate rebranding, that shift led to an octave change in how the company engaged with the public. “Technology is at the forefront of enabling change,” he said. “So when you think about evaluating and amplifying productivity for your customers or delivering systems that enhance their growth or empower innovation—that’s what ultimately enables their success.”
Connection’s new remit was unabashedly ambitious. “If you fast forward to today, our mission is to be a global solution provider that connects people with technology, enhances their growth, elevates their productivity, and empowers innovation. Commitment to our customers is reflected in everything we do.”
Connection is not alone in this fast-moving frontier market. “Let me put this in a little perspective,” McGrath told CEO-NA. “The global addressable IT market that we sell into is thought to be approximately $5.3 trillion. Managed services alone is a $1.7 trillion industry.”
Throw in software, a $1.2 trillion sector (growing at double digits annually) and cybersecurity, the fastest growing item in the IT basket (expanding by 15% a year), and the call for topnotch service providers only grows. And that’s not even counting AI, a foundational tool that McGrath argued “is shaping everything.” So how does a company stand out in this crowded high-stakes market? McGrath takes the drone’s eye view. “Technology has always come in waves. And, of course, the ability to transform to help our customers navigate and really catch these waves is mission-critical to our success,” he says.
From retail PCs to client management, from cloud computing to AI, Connection has been there, riding the tech wave for 43 years and counting. Anything less, McGrath said, and a company risks falling behind.
“I believe that the ability to transform is a competitive advantage,” McGrath said. “Our culture is built on that premise—and our team lives it every day.”
Industry gatekeepers appear to agree. In late 2024, McGrath’s management notched an enviable milestone – a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 79, indicating stellar customer loyalty Now that’s Connection.
