Over the years, technology has revolutionized various aspects of life - how we learn, communicate, travel and work. The newer technologies that we intend to adopt in the coming year are a mix of high quality yet simple interfaces for data entry. The newer technologies will help us to connect to external systems with a level of reliability which is unheard as of now. In this endeavour channel partners will have to embrace this technology and will play a very pivotal role in educating customers and helping them to adopt it without dramatic changes to the way their businesses are conducted.
The Channel is expected to help business embrace new technologies by offering consulting services and handhold the businesses embracing the technology to complete the journey of transformation.
While these are opportunities for the channel to grow and evolve, there are also many aspects which pose big challenge to the vendors. One such challenge is holding inventory by distributors, which is why corporates are now beginning to focus on retailing. Vendors are now gradually reaching directly to the retailers, thereby abolishing the concept of sub-distributors. As a result of this, National Distributors are playing the role of a regional distributor and many of the large vendors are now counting on them for specific products and regions.
It is also becoming evident that to reach out to large consumer audience, vendors have been taking the e-commerce route (through companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba and others) to clear old inventories and a few new arrivals.
In our recent survey, another e-commerce player, Naaptol, which is funded by Japan’s Mitsui & Co. that owns and operates TV shopping & e-commerce platform targets tier-IV and tier-VI cities in the country. This online selling module of Naaptol competes with Reliance owned HomeShop 18, India’s largest TV shopping site as well as with TVC Skyshop and Star CJ.
The Indian retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-paced industries due to the entry of several new players. The exponential growth of e-commerce business has given risen a number of regulatory issues and legal questions. The new FDI Rules issued by Department of Industrial Policy and Planning (DIPP) have been introduced which have barred online marketplaces, with foreign investments, from selling products from sellers in which the online marketplaces hold a stake. The good part is vendors are managing to sell their old inventories through online. Their brand showrooms on the other hand are witnessing slow business, where vendors keep the latest products only for the branding point of view.
There is a strong representation from various trade associations across the country to pass the draft policy without making any changes in the policy under pressure that gives undue advantage to e-commerce companies. Industry sources say online retailers set up new structures to get around those loopholes by mandating other sellers to buy from those large sellers and then in turn sell those products on e-marketplaces. However, some experts believe that lawyers will find a way to work around the updated guidelines as well.
“SMB is one of our fastest growing partner led segment”
Joybrata Mukherjee
Director - Channel, SI, Alliances and Service Providers, HPE India
“We have been at the forefront in enabling our channel partners to provide the best solutions, which help customers to deliver business outcomes. This year, we expect to witness a more edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven enterprise approach, alongside flexible, consumption-based IT.
We have always considered our partners as an extension of our own team and will continue with our unwavering commitment towards them. Through our enhanced Partner Ready Program, we are enabling our partners to earn more by increasing their focus on high-growth areas of the market. Additionally, the program will also ensure they improve their skills to more effectively sell solutions in the future through new training and competencies.
SMB is one of our fastest growing segment which is partner led. The SMB sales team works closely with our channel partners to drive aggressive growth in SMB. We are also seeing exciting growth opportunities in telecom, public sector and banking.”
“We have a dedicated team to run channel programs and increase our footprint”
Vinay Sinha
India Business Lead and Senior Director, India Sales - AMD
“With digital transformation changing the dynamics of businesses, modern workloads are led by innovations with deeper adoption of emerging technologies such as data, cloud, AI and IoT among others. This further enables organizations to let channel partners take more charge and cater to the changing requirements of the end customers. Channel partners will have to play the role of strategic consultants and build on their specializations to add value to customers.
At AMD, we have a dedicated team whose primary objective is to run an SMB and channel program to increase our footprint in these segments, by adding more experienced and effective channel partners to our network.
We will also continue supporting our channel partners’ market specific initiatives and ensure enough market exposure is in place to a) expand partner network to new users, and b) increase mindshare of the value and benefits that AMD has to offer.”
“We want our partners to transform from being a hardware reseller to reselling solutions”
Anil Sethi
Vice President, Channels, Dell EMC India
“Channel partners, system integrators and distributors have played a critical role in empowering Dell Technologies customers on their path towards digital transformation. The Dell Technologies Partner Program has been instrumental in ensuring profitability and scale for all our partners in India and across the globe. We believe that the partner program will further catalyse our go-to-market strategy and business growth.
We really want our partners to make the transformation from just being a hardware reseller to reselling solutions that meet business objectives. They may not be able to move 100 percent in quick time but they can at least start the journey. It will be a good start for partners to sell more lines of business at their customer end, for example, they can sell storage or networking products than just selling a server. We would like our partners to give us candid feedback.
While we are doing well in our results, we definitely do not want to be overconfident. We remain humble as we want to hear the feedback as there might be many things we still need to improve on."
“Acer ensures partners to grow & evolve and respond to changing market needs”
Chandrahas Panigrahi
CMO & Consumer Business Head, Acer India
“Acer that has always been a very channel friendly company has devised a range of programs for partners for 2019, starting from regular product training, introduction of thin and light series of products (both gaming and mainstream) and strategic programs which will help the partners to grow.
Acer is working on ease of doing business by partners with us by streamlining processes, providing the right sales and marketing materials, progress reports and many others. In addition to these, we also look at specific regions, the potential to grow and acceptability of our products into that existing ecosystems. We also look at them as an extension of our business; for instance, with Microsoft ending their support with Windows 7, customers will gradually have to shift to Windows 10 which means, channel partners will need redirect the end users towards modern PCs which are faster, sleeker and feature rich for better customer experience.
By introducing the right product to the right customer channel partners will always play a key role in providing extensive market reach and coverage to introduce the new technologies to the market."
For Lenovo DCG, 90% of business comes from channel partners
Ashish Taneja
Channel Head - Lenovo DCG India
“In 2019, we anticipate an overall transition where we will see enterprises moving towards Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) through hyper converged Infrastructure (HCI). Additionally, we see emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High Powered Computing (HPC), along with consolidation of cloud as some of the trends that will impact business in 2019.
These trends is changing business models, and mean that channel partners have to adapt and have a strategy that caters to their customers. At Lenovo DCG, we understand that it is important to understand the customer’s goals and their need for change, and we will continue to work closely with our partners to enhance and monetize their specializations.
Our objective is to be the partner of choice. As a channel-first company with 90% of business coming from our channel partners, we work closely with our channel partners by providing them with tools to harness their specialization.”
“Our Channel strategy is to arm customers with cloud, flash and hyper-converged infrastructure"
Kaushal Veluri
Director - Channels & Alliances, NetApp India & SAARC
“2019 will be an important year for the IT channel industry as customers continue to become more data driven and look for products and strategies that will make their digital transformation journey smooth and easy. We aim is to continue educating our customers and partners so that they understand data, know how to manage and analyse it and get insights from it.
Our channel strategy for 2019 is to arm our customers with cloud, flash and hyper-converged infrastructure. Since our partners play a major role in the go-to market strategy, we ensure that they are equipped with the right skill-set so that they can confidently talk to the end customers.
Our channel partner ecosystem is a comprehensive one consisting of three key aspects – innovation, skill-set and revenue. We have various programs and summits which will help them to invest in sales and marketing related activities, acquire new customers, and expand in cities or markets.”
Partners play a crucial role for Oracle in pushing its cloud growth
Ritesh Syal
Senior Director and Head – Alliances & Channels, Oracle India
“In the digital economy, we foresee a lot of opportunities for our partners to drive business transformation for customers. For Oracle, channel partners play an important role in pushing the overall cloud growth in India, which is one of the fastest growing markets for Oracle APAC.
With cloud as the foundation for success, channel partners today have numerous opportunities around the implementation of new, innovative technologies.
Two key growth areas for Oracle India in 2019 are: a) emerging as the cloud SaaS leader, leading with cloud ERP; (b) help Indian organisations upgrade to the technology of tomorrow, today - with generational innovations like Oracle Gen 2 cloud and Oracle Autonomous Database - the world’s first and only ‘self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing’ database. This will also result in building a robust cloud service partner network and expand cloud adoption among Oracle’s large customer base in India.”
“Our goal is to set up a skilled team of partners, committed to growing with Infor”
Jonathan Wood
General Manager, India, Middle East, and Africa (IMEA) - Infor
“Channel partners play a crucial role in Infor’s growth story as they help in penetrating the breadth and depth of the market by offering strategic industry-specific cloud capabilities. Infor has been committed to the growth of our partner network, called the Infor Partner Network (IPN).
We equip our partners with world-class solutions, the highest quality of training, support and enablement in the industry. Our goal is to organize a skilled team of partners, committed to growing with Infor, expanding their businesses and staying ahead of the market, while providing customers with innovative technology suites that are beautiful, functional, and easy to use.
In India, we see great growth opportunity in the SMB and enterprises sector, pegging growth from tier-2 Indian cities. We are ramping up our channel business by investing and recruiting more partners in key geographies, and recruiting world class channel managers to support this growth.”
In 2019, Avaya looks to innovate, transform, and grow in value to its channel partners
Sachin Vig
Sales Director - Emerging Enterprises, Avaya India
“Over the course of 2018, we have made significant investments in technology partnerships which have paid dividends, leading to fully formed solutions, that are now available on Avaya’s platforms and, crucially, to our channel partners.
In 2019, we are looking to further innovate, transform, and grow in value and relevance to our channel partners. This year, Avaya will be focused further on three major aspects to drive its channel strategy. First is an intense focus on the cloud. We aim to make cloud services available to every partner irrespective of their business size/model. Secondly, the focus is going to be primarily on enabling the partner community to move from one value proposition to more advanced ones.
And lastly, Avaya will be focused on inclusivity and open innovation. We aim to empower our channel partners to provide holistic solutions to their customers through our open platforms (APIs), creating opportunities for innovation-minded channel partners and ‘take the lead on innovation’.”
“Our strong team of channel partners ensure wider reach and customer satisfaction for Xerox”
Vineet Gehani
Director – Technology and Channels, Xerox India
“Channel partners are critical to Xerox India business. They help the company gain important market feedback, insights and customer expectations. We have seen about 30% growth in channel partner numbers in FY18 and we attribute this success to the new initiatives undertaken towards channel development.
With an aim to deliver new value and aid growth for our channel partners, we have recently announced our new Global Partner Program. The globally acclaimed program will help accredited partners expand into new sources of predictable and profitable revenue with award winning products, supplies, and solutions that are easy to sell and easy to use. In 2019, our efforts would be directed to ensure that our partners reap greater revenue benefits with Xerox.
We would urge all partners to best leverage the provided technologies and the tools available to them, while remembering that Xerox is always ready to support them further.
As an organisation, we are focused on further innovating with digital solutions. We also share space with major IT players in the areas of automation and digitization – and together with our channel network, we are working towards tapping these significant newer opportunities."
“Partners are the strongest and the most important pillars supporting Kaspersky business”
Anand Shringi
Channel Head- South Asia, Kaspersky Lab
“In the very first quarter of 2019, we at Kaspersky Lab have announced our new partner program- Kaspersky United. It is a global partner program that enables Kaspersky Lab’s partners – including resellers, service providers, and system integrators, to focus on selling the Kaspersky Lab services and products that match their own specializations. This is a step by Kaspersky to be transparent and rewarding to the partners globally at an equal level.
We have always said this that our partners are the strongest and the most important pillars supporting our business. And to empower them for us means indirectly empowering our business. In 2019 we are determined to focus on conducting more channel partner trainings, better schemes which are rewarding for both channel and consumers. Just like they have bestowed their faith upon us,partners should maintain the same and we together will do wonders and achieve great success in 2019.
As they are our channel to reach to end consumers, we need to completely rely on them as and when we adapt to new technologies. We will soon be announcing the new schemes that we have chalked out for Q1 and Q2."
“We help partners understand customer business needs & providing overall security”
Vinayaka B S
Channel Alliance Leader, India & SAARC Check Point
“We shall see a paradigm shift in terms of the growth of channel partners in 2019. This is more likely owing to the fact of evolution of more sophisticated Cyber Threats in 2019. We are empowering our Channel with solutions & architecture to address the gap in terms of the attack vectors & the solutions.
We are helping our Channel Partners with the consultative approach, helping them understand customer business needs & providing overall security beyond traditional controls. The emphasis is on educating our channel community with not only the latest solutions, but also help them understand & disseminate the relevant Industry regulations & compliance with our Infinity Architecture which helps customers overcome their business challenges.
We will be launching our new Channel Partner Program “Check PointS” in April 2019 which will ensure Channel Partners working with us more cohesively. This program will work in parallel with our existing Stars Partner Program in 2019 & will replace the same in 2020.”
“There is a huge untapped potential across all industries IN RPA for channel”
Ashutosh Kapoor
VP of Partnerships UiPath India
“RPA is a new area where we see lot of opportunities for channel. Just in over a year we have identified and worked with over 65 automation specialist VARs who are serving some of the largest Indian enterprises.
We see specialization within the channel ecosystem based on implementation services, managed services, ISVs, training, and industry-specific expertise. The year would also see channel partners move deeper into areas which are a combination of AI, ML, and RPA. So there is a huge untapped potential across all industries for RPA.
The role of the channel will be to help customers get on to a rapid adoption path of new digital technologies. The channel will have to develop expertise in RPA, AI, and ML by training and/ or employing the right talent with digital technology skills and develop an expertise in understanding business processes.We have embarked on a multi-tier channel strategy in India and had appointed Ingram Micro as the national distributor to serve the needs of our Indian channel partners.”
“Fortinet partners can provide value in simplifying and securing the networks of customers”
Jitendra Ghughal
Director Channels, India & SAARC, Fortinet
“Partners have a sizable business opportunity in helping customers successfully address today’s security challenges. Customers need to automate their security hygiene measures and replace isolated security devices with an integrated security fabric architecture that can seamlessly span the growing attack surface. Leveraging threat assessments, expertise, and centralization, partners can reduce complexity and enhance security for their customers, while growing their own business.
Security services offered by partners ensure that organizations of all sizes can consistently receive the security support they need across their entire security lifecycle, including planning, designing, implementing, integrating, managing, operating, and optimizing the security infrastructure all provided by experienced security professionals with broad visibility into global threat trends and strategies.
As organizations seek ways to reduce operational complexity, partners can play a role in assistingto select and integrate tools and streamlining security processes. This is place where Fortinet partners can provide value in simplifying and securing the networks of their customers, while growing their own business.”
“Our strategy is to work with partners who see opportunity in the cloud business”
Murali Urs
Country Manager - India Barracuda Networks
“The growth of channel partners will be more driven by the adoption of cloud. With dwindling margins and increasing competition, the need for channel partners to focus on services in and around cloud will define their growth for 2019 and beyond.
Barracuda has one of early adapters of cloud as a platform and we have developed all most all of our products to suit the cloud adoption by our customers. This inturn gives all our channel partners to work with us and offer a portfolio of solutions that will help customers to secure their cloud adoption.
Our strategy is to work with partners who see opportunity in the cloud business – both for security and data protection. Barracuda has this unique story which helps partners to open new doors in existing customers and also open doors are new customers as well.
Evolve and scale and adopt -these are the 3 important words the partner community will need to be the mantra.”
“Citrix looks forward to working closely with its partners in 2019”
Raghuram Krishnan
Director – Partner Citrix India
“Citrix has a robust partner ecosystem and we are quite proud of the work they have done in the previous years. With our solutions around workspace and networking, we at Citrix are leading this space. With the proliferation and growth of digital tools through technologically enhanced workspaces, we look forward to working closely with our partners in 2019 to bring about a change in the current industry landscape.
Citrix has the solutions that customers need for a complete digitized work suite and provides them with an opportunity to accelerate at a faster pace. Partners that embrace intelligent workspaces along with our networking solutions will enjoy multi fold advantage.We expect 2019 to be a great year for us and our channel partners, as they will experience immense opportunities in growing their business with us. This will also be the year that we substantially grow our market and categorically move away from virtualization.We can safely conclude that Citrix not only has the solutions that customers need but is also playing a key role in helping them in their digital transformation journey."
Netmagic suggests partners to become more solution centric and problem solvers
Shantaram Shinde
VP & National Head - Channel, Business NTT Com-Netmagic
“In 2018, our traditional SI partners brought in few big collocation and data centres. In 2019, we expect this to grow by about 30% to 35%. The drivers for this growth will be multi cloud, private cloud, SD-WAN, and security services. Two other main contributors will be ‘born in the cloud’ and application integration partners. Changing partner profiles is what we see as a positive outlook for 2019.
Our aim is to suggest partners to become more solution centric and problem solvers as opposed to reselling the available set of services. Customers will also look at them as a solution or consulting partner with this kind of an approach rather than a reseller for a particular OEM.
Our partner programmes are detailed to ensure that there is no room for misunderstanding, doubts, or error. The key in all of them is simplicity and ensuring both short- and long-term success.
Going forward, we will ensure constant and transparent conversations regarding our partner programmes with all concerned – as has been the norm always. Clear and simple communication is the gateway to achieving the desired objectives."
Channel partners aligning to Industry 4.0 practices shall continue to see growth
Amit Gujral,
CMO, LG Electronics India
“The business construct in India is such where channel partners are integral part of businesses. The fundamental constructs of business remain same and thus growing economy based growth in business is attributing to the growth of channel partners as well. However, the dynamism of consumer behaviour on channel adoption is varying and therefore channel partners who are aligning to Industry 4.0 practices shall continue to see growth.
Increased penetration to rural markets via adequate channel and significant balance between offline and online channels is what is being envisaged by LG. We have dedicated BUs under the umbrella of B2B catering to enterprise needs and strategies are drawn for multi-fold growth in this segment.
Certainly AI and IoT are the biggest change that constitutes this Industrial revolution 4.0 and these technology applications shall enter in every sphere of life and basis the use case applicability, these shall be adapted in all functions of business including channel.”
“Tally Partners will help existing businesses smoothly transit to the newer technologies”
Joyce Ray
India Business Head Tally Solutions
“2019 is going to be an exciting year for all of us. Continuing with the efforts that we have been putting over the last two years to help businesses automate accounting, we will focus on connecting businesses to each other, and ensure that they are able to fully benefit from the newer ways of working and technologies that are available to us. In this task, our partners will play a very important and pivotal role in ensuring that the 1.6 million existing businesses have a smooth transition to the newer technologies.
The channel strategy for 2019 for Tally will be a mix of growing capability and capacity of our partners across India and countries outside India. In this we are deeply committed to ensuring profitable growth for our partners which translates to small partners becoming 5-6 member organizations, medium partners becoming 10-20 member and our large partners now progressively becoming more than 100 plus member organizations.
The key message from all of us at Tally to our partners who are an integral part of our family is for them to prepare their organisations for an exciting decade ahead. In doing so our partners have proven time and again that they have adapted quickly, learned very fast and indeed helped businesses in this transformation journey."
“Our mantra is to work with handpicked partners and train them in latest technologies”
Shibu Paul
Vice President – International Sales Array Networks
“The Channel is witnessing a gradual transition from the traditional asset model to an asset less model driven by cloud technology. Solutions like AI & ML are becoming more relevant to business.
Our mantra is to work with handpicked channel partners, train them and help them create build sustainable and profitable business models. Our strategy is to empower our partners by offering solutions on our patented Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) in Networking & Security platform. With the help of our dedicated channel ecosystem, we are focused on developing a skilled pool of resources. Moreover we will be investing in training and certifying our partners as well as joining customer engagement programs. In order to ensure that channel partners are rewarded for all their efforts, we will be assuring maximum margins in all Array deals.
Array has the potential to make a difference to the channel community by creating a highly trained channel ecosystem capable of propelling the company towards the emerging trends.”
“Barco wants partners to become consultants to customers and not only just sell products”
Ramya Chatterjee
Director – Sales (Visualization & Entertainment), Barco India
“‘Empowering’ & ‘Enabling’ the channel partners are the two core strategies of Barco’s GTM in 2019. We have devised multiple partners programs to help them be abreast of our products and technology at large.Further, we are aggressively focusing on onboarding new partners and hope to double our partner count by 2020.
We have different nature of partners to cater to different industry verticals like Audio Visual (AV) Partners, Office Automation (OA) partners, IT & Networking partners, Security & Surveillance partners, Education vertical focused partners and so on.
The partner community needs to play an integral role because we have an indirect selling strategy and that’s why our partners become all the more pivotal. As we move forward and technology continues to drive change across businesses irrespective of scale or size, it is important for partners to evolve as well. Partners will have to become consultants wherein they are not only selling but consulting customers to bring the best possible outcome.”
“2019 will be a year of focus on the enterprise for SonicWall”
Debashish Mukherjee
Country Director India & SAARC, SonicWall
“With the trend moving towards software define everything, the partners will be seen embracing the new wave of technological transformation including multi cloud strategy.We will also see some partners offering solutions around predictive security technologies and holistic security platforms combined with services.
Partners moving to MSSP model to deliver security solutions toSMB/SME customers would be on the growth trajectory. In short, growth of channel partners in 2019 would be directly proportional to their ability to adopt newer technologies and investing on skill development apart from adding value to customers’ business through services.
As a channel-driven OEM we ensure that we offer our channel an ecosystem that helps them evolve into a solution centric organization. At SonicWall we have a very comprehensive channel strategy and we continue to invest in building a world-class channel programfocused on empowering the channel ecosystem by providing the best-in-class pre and post-sales support, training and certification programs, access to award-winning SecureFirst Partner program.
With a future-thinking mindset, 2019 will be a year of focus on the enterprise for SonicWall.”
Juniper believes its channel base to continue growing in 2019
Harshavardhan Kathaley
Director – Channel Sales (India and SAARC) Juniper Networks
“Juniper’s Enterprise and Commercial business has been growing in India over the years. Our channel base has also grown accordingly and we see this growth to continue in 2019. We will also be focusing on new geographies in India as well as South Asian markets with an aim to acquire new customers along with our partners.
Juniper’s partner program framework is the most dynamic in nature towards aligning and addressing various aspects of partnership. The new 2019 Juniper Partner Advantage (JPA) deliver programs with reduced partnership requirements, DEAL-REG, Rebates, Rewards, MDF, tools and training to make it easier for partners to win with Juniper.
Partners are at the center of our “deliberately dependent” go-to-market strategy. However, conversations with customers are increasingly centred on cloud & automation. Hence, it is extremely important for partners to invest in enhancing the knowledge and skillsets in keeping with the technological timeframe on cloud and automation.”
“We are facilitating a growth for partners that keeps pace with the disruption in industry”
Bhavin Bhatt
Regional Director, M.Tech India & SAARC
“The relationships with our channel partners are proactive and closely knit, and we expect to see considerable growth not only in 2019 but also in the years to follow.
The number of channel partners may not increase substantially, however contributions to revenue from established partners are well on course to be over the previous year. We are facilitating a growth that keeps pace with the disruption in Industry.
Cloud, IoT, blockchain and AI are disrupting the IT industry and in particular to Cyber security. Cloud and AI are currently on the forefront of this disruption. Partners will be the interface to the customers and will highlight these new product lines.
They will introduce and communicate advantages of having a single solution that is futuristic, addresses multiple threats and safeguards the Networks at an affordable price point when compared with existing Hardware replacements and upgrades.”
Western Digital sees a wonderful growth opportunity across all segments for its partners
Jaganathan Chelliah
Director; Marketing, Western Digital India
“We believe in 3E strategy, which is enablement, engagement and enrichment. Enabling the channel is always our prime focus through proper education and training. We always engage our channel partners through key marketing initiatives. We have a well-structured rewards to motivate our channel partners to encourage them for their consistent performance. We will continue to follow these in 2019 as well. Specific initiatives for channel partners to promote are being rolled out in this calendar year.”
Khalid Wani
Director; Channel Sales Western Digital India
“We see a wonderful opportunity for growth across all segments, be it consumer or SMB channels. Everybody is creating lot of content now a days and trend is increasing day by day. Now consumers also realize that backup is very important whether this backup is for their PC or mobile phones. We believe that this realization is going to drive the data storage market in 2019.”
Vivek Tyagi
Business Director; Enterprise and Embedded, Western Digital India
“Data explosion is happening everywhere and we see it as a win-win opportunity for our channel partners and us. We also expect NVMe technology to disrupt the Enterprise storage market with improvement in latency and performance. Our channel partners are going to be agents for this transformation and we expect them to play a very important role for Western Digital.”
“Channel has to redefine their business model and move away from ‘The Transaction Mind-set’
B S Rao
VP – Marketing, CtrlS Datacenters
“As most information technology decision makers continue to embrace change, and align information technology with business, channel partners will have a key role in playing the role of a catalyst in their transformation journey.
The Year 2019 can be a productive and profitable year provided they will enhance their selling capabilities, invest in re-skilling their technical teams especially pre-sales, service delivery (if applicable), revamp their business model and strike new partnerships. Technologies such as Cloud, IoT, Analytics, 3D Printing virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) and opportunities such as digitization of records, migration of legacy infrastructure and applications to cloud offer enormous opportunities to players in the channel ecosystem.
Channel players should move away from ‘The Transaction Mind-set’; they will have to redefine their business model, re-skill people, and transform their selling from transaction based selling to consultative selling. They will have to build their own Centers of Excellence (CoEs) to deliver the right technology to the right customer.
Since the early 1990, channel ecosystem has been engaging customers in transactions by selling equipment, software and deploying them. They responded to the needs of information technology decision makers, however they were all treated as selling transactions. However, since most businesses are under immense pressure, they are seeking channel partners to play a key role as a consultant – advising them how to migrate from a legacy application (or) infrastructure, how to secure their business from security threats, whether or not a particular technology would be suitable. Hence, keeping in mind the expectations of customers, it is time for channels to shift their gears."
“Partners are encouraged to invest in technology infrastructure and handle deployments of all sizes”
Ankur Goel
India Channel Head Plantronics
“For 2019, channel partners should invest on enhancing the overall ‘Experience’ for the end customers. “Video is the new voice” goes the thinking in many organizations today, where employees are increasingly working remotely from home offices, satellite offices, client sites and the road. Channel partners should invest in enhancing the customer service excellence and focus on investing in technology infrastructure to handle deployments of all sizes and complexities and training users to improve adoption and finally, to maintain the deployment”.
