26 01732 759725 and displays. We are a significant part of that market in terms of product supply and, more importantly, we are a value partner. Our mix of product is far higher than most, if not all, of our competitors. Our ASP (average selling price) is above the market average because we don’t sell on price – we sell on value and experience. “Outside the education vertical, we have a good reputation in SMB. We have an incredibly healthy SMB business with a couple of major retailers and there is a natural underlying demand for our brand and our product from smaller registered organisations, SOHOs and SMBs, asking retailers and e-tailers for Acer devices. We have very good relationships at that level. “In public sector (outside education) and enterprise I don’t think many players see Acer as strategic, or have historically seen Acer as strategic, but that has been changing over the last three years. We are currently working with a huge multinational reseller on a framework of supply for one of the leading social media brands in the world. That has all been led out of the UK and the ExCos of that reseller have told us they’ve enjoyed the experience of working with us and would like to talk to us about doing more. We’ve seen that more and more over the last three years, people realising we’re a safe pair of hands, we’re a good partner and we do what we say we’re going to do.” Immediate impact That being the case, in what areas of the market does Booth think Acer can have an immediate impact? “We already have a good footprint in public sector and some great relationships there, but our penetration of public sector is nowhere near where it can be. compute and display and Chromebooks are core to our business and will always be core to our business, we have a lot more we can talk about. The overriding feedback from the partners we had in Milan was that they want to do more with Acer. We just need to have the right conversations with the right people.” Strategic partners As well as giving partners access to a greater range of Acer and Acer Group products, Acer is also talking about partner recruitment, on the reseller/MSP side and potentially also on the distribution side – in the UK, Acer’s distribution partners are TD SYNNEX and ALSO Westcoast. So, what does Booth think partners make of Acer now and how would he like them to view Acer in the future? “It depends on the partner and the vertical,” he says. “I think our education partners see us as strategic, particularly around Chrome but also around Windows stores and some retailers do service VAT‑registered organisations, there is a clear distinction between Acer’s retail partners, which it deals with directly, and resellers and MSPs which it trades with through distribution and which provide a level of service and customer engagement that commercial businesses depend on. “VARs and MSPs are important to Acer primarily for relationship management. The end user organisations that buy our products aren’t just buying our products, they’re buying a plethora of different technologies and want a service provider that they value and respect and trust can be there if they have a problem or need help with something, whether that’s networking today, servers tomorrow or computers the day after. “A lot of our partners do all those things and it’s important that we recognise our place in the ecosystem. Compute devices and displays may account for 15-20% of a company’s overall capex, with 80% going on other things. Our reseller partners and the distributors that serve all those needs play a key role in giving Acer an audience and giving Acer the right amount of airtime alongside all those other things end users need to buy.” To this end, expect to see much stronger promotion of Acer’s broader ecosystem to VARs, MSPs and SIs that are well placed to make use of the company’s diversified offering to meet customer’s unique needs and, in the process, capture some of that 80% of spend. “A lot of our growth will be underpinned by being able to say to our distribution and reseller partners that, whilst PCs ...continued
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