B
enefit-Focused
Selling for Better
Cloud Sales
I
n response to the public’s rising demand for faster and
more flexible services, business owners worldwide have
turned to the cloud for the operational speed, power,
and flexibility they need to succeed in today’s highly
competitive market. Whether their customers are looking
to develop their own private clouds or deploy a hosted third
party cloud solution, the enthusiasm for all-things cloud,
provides channel vendors with significant opportunities to
generate revenue. To best position themselves as industry
leaders, partners must provide customers with completely
integrated cloud-based solutions, while educating them on
how to make the most of their cloud infrastructure.
“Nearly seven years ago, Oracle embarked on a mission to
update and modernize all of our applications.” says Stefan
Diedericks, Alliance and Channel Director Oracle South
Africa. “Very few technology companies have the capacity to cross the chasm from one generation of technology
to the next. It requires significant investment, vision and
commitment to become both an on-premise application
provider as well as a leading cloud application provider. The
result is the most comprehensive cloud in the industry, with
a complete suite of enterprise-grade applications, on a common platform, all enhanced with modern, socially enabled
technologies and applications.“
When one considers that depending on their function the
majority of businesses continue to run their IT processes inhouse, it becomes clear that the cloud era is still in its infancy. Therefore, to ensure that end-users enjoy the full benefit
of the cloud and to maximize their sales, partners must
not only deliver the technologies that allow cloud-enabled
businesses to thrive, but also facilitate the robust integration
of these products within their customers’ IT infrastructures.
Given that when they join the public cloud businesses are
choosing to store and process valuable company data
outside their walls, the need for a strong, secure integration architecture with robust data management capabilities
becomes particularly important. Consequently, public cloud
vendors can monetize their knowledge by helping clients
marry their current IT system with their future cloud performance objectives.
The comprehensive nature of the Oracle Cloud is a key
selection consideration for customers. Oracle has the
broadest cloud portfolio in the industry, delivering a complete range of production-level, cross-functional business
applications for each part of your organisation with information and data shared seamlessly across Oracle Cloud
Applications and your other systems. “When we talk about
having the most-comprehensive set of enterprise-grade
and modern business applications in the cloud, we mean
providing a complete suite of sales and marketing applications; a complete suite for customer experience, including
social relationship management; and complete suites for
enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management, and talent management,” continues Diedericks.
For end-users, the dramatic reduction in operating costs
that they can achieve by streamlining their business operations with cloud-based solutions is one of the technology’s major appeals. However, resellers must understand
that regardless of this, their clients’ IT budgets will often
remain stable, which means that they can invest surplus
funds into developing IT innovations to support business
growth. While it may be tempting to bank their additional
margins, business owners must respond to the public’s
demand for innovation and invest some of this profit towards the upkeep of their cloud infrastructure. Resell-centric partners must therefore look to define a new set of
services that will help businesses add measurable value to
their customer-offering through their IT investment, a task
that will require them to make bold decisions and disrupt
the market with positive game-changing ideas
“
Nearly seven years ago,
Oracle embarked on a mission to
update and modernize all of our
applications.
”
The IT landscape has always favored businesses that are
willing to adapt to rapidly evolving market c