Synergy, simplicity, support: surely the top three ingredients of any successful business relationship.
In the channel - where technology providers, Value Added Resellers, and System Integrators feed off each other – they are about as important as it gets.
Sure, the hardware and software must deliver on its promises but, in an increasingly-commoditised sector, that is a given, right?
Instead, all parties look for alternative differentiators that are based not so much in what can be done but how. Is there strategic market alignment? How easy is it to do business with each other? Are we all pulling in the same direction?
For VARs, SIs and MSPs, it is about their own end user customers too. Ultimately, it is those businesses that consume the products, solutions and services upon which everyone’s revenue streams depend. Their expectations must be at least met, better still, exceeded.
When that level of mutuality and inter-dependence is in play, all partners’ contributions are key – which means (for everyone) picking the right one can make all the difference.
“For us, successful partnership is simple: we have to add value to our resellers, and they have to add value to us – when the match is a good one, the opportunities for both sides to deliver on that goal are everywhere,” says Jamie Hughes, Director of Sales (UK) at leading global communications technology vendor Evolve IP, which seeks to maximise that mutual value at every turn.
“Ours is a multi-tier business model; our partner may also have a partner. Understanding that dynamic and ensuring all aspects of our value offering are attractive to all parties, is our constant focus.”
In Evolve IP’s case, several key aspects stand out.
Its powerful cloud-based telephony and collaboration platform is agnostic; integrating seamlessly with analogue devices, SIP-powered devices across multiple different vendors, Webex, Microsoft Teams or more recently Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC).
Additionally, it is a well-resourced, innovative, and highly-technical company which creates solutions that respond directly to user challenges; and it plays extensively in the global enterprise space, a market which many VARs, SIs and MSPs would like to capitalise on but with which they struggle due to solution limitations.
