COVER STORY 01732 759725 32 Vendor testimonials Poly It was a great day. We had lots of engaging conversations with resellers and it gave us a chance to update people on new product solutions and network with the channel. Events like these are super important as they help us drive our key messages through the channel and network with key contacts. Epson After the last two years of Covid and lockdowns it was really positive to be able to get out and meet customers again. The day was very well attended and gave Epson the chance to showcase POS and ColorWorks Hardware, including some new mobile products. It was also a great chance for ID&C to showcase their Event Badging solution which includes the Epson C3500. Newland EMEA Ingram Micro UK have an exceptional partner base and it was a privilege to be able to demonstrate our portfolio of data capture solutions but also meet and understand other business areas that have a massive potential to develop and grow with us. Our products received a lot of interest from AV and Security partners. Zebra Technologies Events like the Festival of Technology are extremely important. Given the last two years we have all experienced, getting a chance to meet partners face to face is vital. Going beyond Microsoft Teams is a relief sometimes, especially when we have introduced so many new products and can get the product in a person’s hand. Micro’s UCC portfolio will enable it to address three main areas where there is either strong growth or strong growth potential. “The first one is obviously that hybrid working/work anywhere model, which we have some specific solutions for. We are also putting a lot of time and effort into making sure we’ve got the right solutions in the meeting room space because the organisations we talk to and the resellers we talk to are still very much of the view that the office continues to have a role to play. “Then, we are still seeing investment being made in those locations to make them more worker-friendly, with huddle rooms rather than a closed door, a table and eight chairs and a strong focus on collaboration. We’re working very closely with our reseller partners to give them that type of technology through partners like Logitech, Poly and Jabra. “The third element is the platform side, with the likes of Microsoft, RingCentral, 8x8 and BlueJeans. Ingram Micro has been pioneering cloud solutions for the last three years through a dedicated business unit, but the IT channel has been a little slow in getting involved in that recurring revenue, SaaS model. We’re working more closely with them to go in at an earlier stage to try and understand how the platform works and how customers are using those solutions.” Service value-add He adds that on the UCC side a big selling point for vendors and reseller partners is Comms-care, a provider of IT support and service solutions that became an Ingram Micro company in 2016 and which adds to the overall value of a solution. “Every year we plot out our strategy, and what we really want to achieve in each business unit is the value add of the solution we can offer. On the UCC side, this comes from integration with our existing meeting room solutions and the ability of our Comms-care business to deploy, manage and maintain those solutions. “For example, we launched HP officially this month, but we’ve been working with them for the last 12 months around how we were going to integrate their meeting room solutions and be able to manage them through Comms-care.” For resellers, this is just another way in which Ingram Micro makes it easier for resellers to develop new business opportunities, which, as Pandya explains, was what the Festival of Technology was all about. “Most of the customers I spoke to during the day said their core reason for attending was to try to understand technologies they’re not very familiar with and to find out how they can add new products to their portfolio even if they are not specialists in a particular area. Customers were saying ‘we get a lot of CCTV inquiries that we turn away because we can’t do the installations or we don’t know enough about how to specify a camera’. “That was the whole point of the event. Because we do that every day, that’s the value that Ingram Micro gives resellers that don’t yet have the skills or headcount to do it themselves.” ...continued
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