PRINTITRESELLER.UK 39 Q&A to work with it. What we have done is build an ecosystem of products that are Teams-ready. So all the products we sell across contact centre, call recording, phone plans, devices etc. are all Teamsready, so that means when a customer is using O365 and Teams, there’s a whole suite of compatible comms solutions that resellers can offer. We can help resellers to capitalise on this massive opportunity to upsell and cross-sell a suite of certified products and solutions across their customer base rather than open up the door to competition. They don’t need to be Microsoft specialists, that’s where we come in to support. We're not a vendor, and we’re not going to push one product, our role is always centred around a consultative approach. And again with the SaaS model, it’s really easy to tack on an incremental monthly charge which increases the recuring revenue stream. Incidentally, we still sell a lot of on-premise products, and there’s margin opportunity in that area too, it’s not a million miles away from the printer sales model, resellers can lease, sell and install hardware on-premise. I think from our perspective, we would urge print and IT channel vendors to not walk away from these opportunities. You need to jump on this because there is a fantastic opportunity to secure new revenue streams. MR: Looking ahead to the future, what could things look like in one to three years’ time? ML: Digital transformation will continue, Teams will become even more of a prominent player, especially around applications and artificial intelligence will come even more to the fore. I think vendors’ future focus will be on helping people understand how these technologies will help their business especially around enabling employees to have a balanced approach to work and to leverage technologies with the same look and feel wherever they are. I see IT as driving the comms world and if we get the education piece right, we will see the print, IT and comms channels coming together. https://nuvoladistribution.com MR: Are there any opportunities that you think resellers could be exploiting right now? ML: I think there is a fear that resellers might lose control of their customer where the cloud is concerned. They might feel the vendor will come along and take over. But there are many ways to avoid that. As a distributor, our route to market is solely through channel partners, we do not deal with end customers. The opportunity is there for them to expand their offering and give it a go. Print dealerships have been traditionally owner-managed businesses and they have a long history of being nimble and diversifying into new areas. We’ve seen the emergence of bigger organisations as a result of acquisitions within the sector, and among these there is an appetite to expand and grow their customer offering. The opportunity lies in ensuring the sales teams can see the potential for their commission to grow and the SaaS model works in that respect. The market has shifted, buyers used to favour specialist suppliers in different silos, in the UCaaS world for sure that is changing. Buyers are realising the value of close single vendor relationships in terms of the service levels and support they receive. We have to be careful that we don't commoditise the product in the UCaaS world. To some extent the fact that adoption and accessibility of these solutions has risen exponentially is a challenge. But there still needs to be some interaction with understanding the right product fit. For resellers, the opportunity is not just around UCaaS, there is also the Microsoft and in particular, the Teams opportunity. Initially probably two years ago, we saw a lot of the big UCaaS players competing against it – now they realise they can't compete – they've got Print dealerships have been traditionally ownermanaged businesses and they have a long history of being nimble and diversifying into new areas continued...
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