Technology Reseller - v19 2019

technolog y reseller.co.uk VOX POP collaboration technology in more and more of their meeting spaces. For a reseller to protect their margin and their business, they should embrace the move to lower cost solutions and focus on deploying them to many more customers and meeting spaces and on winning much larger deployments within a customer’s environment. Zoom is helping the whole industry with the shift to much larger deployments at a lower cost. It is helping to increase the overall addressable market for resellers, with a new business model driven by low-cost software licences and recurring revenue. The most successful channel partners are the ones who fully embrace this new business model and promote it to their own customers, which results in better customer satisfaction, higher usage, more loyalty and a much longer term relationship. The net result will be much higher revenues and total margin value for the channel. Paul Clarke, Channel Manager North UK, 3CX : Resellers should work with a vendor who is stable, reliable and who they can be confident about investing their time and money with. A vendor who is clear and transparent about not only their product, but also what is required from their resellers and what is expected from them. They also need to move away from this idea of just selling hardware and software. Customers are increasingly choosing lower cost solutions, but if the reseller can provide an entire solution from start to finish, they are not going to lose out on any profits. Give customers what they want by providing them with a low-cost solution but bundle the system with add-ons such as IP phones, CRM packages and support. Instead of just being product resellers, focus on becoming solution providers. Steven Ansell, Collaboration Architecture Lead, Comstor : Forward thinking and agile UC resellers by now should have taken steps to be involved in the move to the cloud. Clients will increasingly be demanding collaboration tools and resellers need to team up with a cloud SP, work closely with one of the market leaders, or even set up their own offering. Being trained and skilled in solutions is the most important value to add to clients. It’s like when VoIP began displacing traditional PBX. Resellers that sat on the fence and didn’t make the move closed their doors. Change happens constantly and regularly in the collaboration space, and the winners are those that move with the times. and drive a customer’s future and direction. Engage with customers as a consultant first, supplier second. Talking about current and future state, understanding barriers and widening the conversation will deliver great value. A discovery approach around ‘what’s the challenge?’ will yield opportunities beyond UC and into networks, security and applications. Services are central to the ability to consult, fulfil and manage. For example, Westcon’s refresh and renewals service helps to maintain a partner’s relevance and drive that forward-looking discussion. Gareth Long, Head of Hosted Voice Programme, Daisy Wholesale : Resellers need to ensure they are partnering with providers who can offer a full suite of products that work together to optimise the UC solution. A reliable and quality service will sell itself, regardless of the margin you put on it. By offering a service that meets all of a customer’s needs, resellers can put themselves ahead of competitors, allowing them to avoid the race to the bottom. Additionally, the rate at which technology is evolving makes future-proof solutions a necessity. With Daisy’s One and Only Convergence Solution, our Partners can offer their customers a market-leading portfolio designed for the future. This suite of products provides a refined balance of flexibility and functionality, while delivering enterprise-grade connectivity, all priced to allow our Partners to make a significant margin, navigating the UC landscape without compromising on profit. Mike Adams, Channel Manager, Zoom : The focus of a reseller should not be margin percentages, but the total value of a project, including recurring revenue, and the total addressable market. As an overall market trend, the cost of UC solutions and meeting room solutions is going down, but the volume is going up, as more and more companies are deploying UC solutions to all their employees and deploying Jeff Blackley 39 Paul Clarke Steven Ansell