Forward-thinking partners are already rewriting how the Channel grows

Dylan Chadha, 
Retail Lead-MENA, 
Context

Data has taken a new role to help retailers, resellers and vendors to not just manage business more efficiently, but actually grow the entire pie across the ecosystem. Across Europe, we have seen how access to collective market data has transformed relationships and outcomes in the channel. We see similar opportunities are opening up here in India too. I would like to call this the great revenue shift. In Europe, more than 35% of all software revenues are now delivered as a service. This isn't just about technology, but it is a change in how value is created. Resellers there are adapting fast, investing in digital capability, managing services and customer success. The message is clear - those who combine record revenue with data driven insights will define the next decade. The most forward thinking partners are already rewriting how the channel grows. Their priorities, cybersecurity, Cloud products and AI are where customers now place trust and spend. And as we all know, the biggest year on year growth in the last year has been AI. This playbook is unfolding globally, and our role is to provide a data foundation that supports it, helping every market, including India, accelerate that transformation. Unfortunately, most companies have an AI readiness gap. According to a reseller survey we did where we asked 5000 people, 64% of them said that they weren't AI ready yet. The need of the hour is to develop AI capabilities fast, before partners fall behind in fully leveraging AI. It is not possible for anyone to build meaningful machine learning insights using only internal data. The AI readiness gap compounds a wider power imbalance. Vendors still set prices, control margins and decide who sells what to whom. Distributors relying solely on their own data or vendor forecasts might witness very soon eroding profitability.