Technology Reseller v47

technologyreseller.co.uk 37 Everybody is looking to move product sales to ‘as-a-service’ business models. We’re seeing it everywhere. As consumers, we’ve become used to subscription services for films, sports coverage, mobile services, gaming and so on. In the business world, Salesforce.com historically broke the mould and we now are seeing most business services moving towards subscription models over up-front purchase. My colleague David is talking about subscription software on the opposite page, but I’d like to look at the increasing momentum coming behind device-as-a-service as a proposition for resellers. Accenture gives the following definition: “Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) is emerging as a highly desirable option for both customers and providers. Customers gain flexibility, lower costs, and freedom from device management responsibilities, while providers benefit from new services revenue, a more predictable revenue stream, lower warranty costs, and substantially reduced sourcing costs through device re-deployment.” In my view, interest from customers in the ‘as-a-service’ business model has been greatly accelerated for resellers in the last two years. First, the pandemic experience has focused everyone’s appreciation on virtual interactions and made us realise that IT infrastructure needs upgrading to offer robust connectivity in all circumstances (including the move to more homeworking). Secondly, the global shortage of some electronic components such as processor chips has injected additional life into the refurbished market – amplifying the secondary market demand for used equipment. Of course, for resellers to offer the managed service approach (charging a monthly fee for equipment, set-up, software, maintenance and service) cannot be achieved without the kind of smart finance that Siemens Financial Services provides. It is the essential enabler, bridging your need for up-front payment and the end client’s desire for spread payments which align to the benefits they will gain from the all-encompassing managed service solution. Our collective expertise and knowledge about how those corporate Technology solutions work in practice means that we can procure a financing structure that exactly fits the end client. This is available to our reseller partners. Many of the main hardware providers are starting to offer DaaS propositions – which is fine if the end customer wants all their computing solution from one brand. However, their appetite for multi-product solutions (which are the best-practice norm) is very limited indeed. In contrast, SFS is very happy to finance multi-brand DaaS solutions and enable our reseller partners to offer this proposition to customers. DaaS is particularly attractive to a reseller’s SMEs customers who do not have IT departments. They don’t have the time or skills to craft a tailored outsource agreement and simply want a per-month, per-machine managed service, covering hardware, software, support, patches and updates – along with a 24/7 support line. Smart finance is the magic ingredient because it helps everyone to be cashlight – OEM, reseller and customer alike. A specialist, such as SFS, offers reseller partners reliability in all market conditions, an appetite for multi-OEM solutions, a range of financing tools (across leasing, hire-purchase, loans, receivables structures, for example), specialist technology knowledge, easy digital processes, and the ability to procure exactly the right financing structure for each end-customer – including end of life disposal. If you would like to offer this kind of exciting package – bringing DaaS to your customers whatever mix of hardware brand they require, contact me: www.linkedin.com/in/robert-inchley02909a4/ The DaaS proposition from Jigsaw “As one of the UK’s biggest Apple technology resellers, it’s been crucial for us to change and adapt to our customer’s preferences. Working with the team at Siemens Financial Services on our Device as a Service offering has provided a much richer experience for our customers – giving them the flexibility to acquire new devices in a subscription capacity at a fixed monthly cost without having to fund the total cost up front”. 1 https://www.ciodive.com/news/Microsoft-saas-office-price-increases/611210/ 2 Oracle – https://www.oracle.com/cloud/compute/pricing.html; SAP HANA – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/reservations/prepayhana-large-instances-reserved-capacity; IBM – https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ rep_ca/3/897/ENUS202-003/index.html; Cisco – https://www.ingrammicro.com/visitor/ cisco/services_cheat_sheet_for_partners_sept.pdf 3 https://www.subscribed.com/read/news-and-editorial/microsoft-is-raising-saas-pricesothers-will-follow 4 https://blog.ongig.com/saas/saas-software-discounts/; https://www.subscribed.com/read/ news-and-editorial/microsoft-is-raising-saas-prices-others-will-follow 5 Such as: – https://www.bmc.com/blogs/saas-growth-trends/; https://enterprisetalk.com/ featured/three-enterprise-saas-trends-to-watch-in-2022/; https://adamfard.com/blog/saastrends; https://www.datapine.com/blog/saas-trends/; https://paddle.com/blog/b2b-saastrends-for-2022/; https://financesonline.com/saas-trends/; Device-as-a-service enabled by smart finance Rob Inchley gives his perspective on:

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=