FINAL WORD
today. We add value at every stage from
consulting, sales, marketing, channel
development, implementation to support
and training.
Our value-add complementary services,
including training, implementation and
support, is to ensure our customers get the
right level of services to deploy the best of
breed solution and equip their teams with the
right level of expertise from our consultants
and trainers. We help build true partnerships,
so clients get the maximum value on their
investments. We have endeavoured to be the
authorised training centres for our partners
s o that we percolate the training thrust
among our partner community across the
Middle East and Africa.
A key example of our efforts in enabling
channel skills is that of Polycom where we
have trained hundreds of engineers over the
years and that has helped partners secure
more business and service their clients with
higher customer satisfaction.
We also partner with our vendors to
provide our facilities as authorised training
centres to help them carry out training and
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certification programmes for the channel.
We are a Barco Clickshare certified training
centre and the accreditation programme
offered at our facility aims to strengthen
technology resellers’ relationships with
their customers, through offering a more
in-depth understanding of the capabilities of
enterprise technology systems.
Why training and certification is an
important step toward closing the
skills gap
Being trained and certified is the crucial
step in establishing customer confidence,
equipping oneself for the upcoming
assignments and keeping resources up to date
on the latest technology trends. Customers
need to feel confident that their needs are
being understood by experts who are industry
certified who can understand the product and
are able to build, modify or enhance their IT
environment and architecture.
Investing in training and certifications
also demonstrate a partner’s commitment
towards growing a vendor’s footprint and
providing customers with specialised product
expertise. Partners can also utilise their
training to upsell and cross-sell solutions.
However, resellers need encouragement and
incentives from vendors and distributors to
assign staff for relevant training. I believe, it’s
also a case of hiring the right people to begin
with, and with the current skills scenario, this
can be a challenge.
Domains such as GDPR auditing, GRC,
AI, Machine Learning, IoT and data science
are reshaping the way companies in the
region do business. It is no surprise that
these tech-based skills and roles will be in
high demand. Partners should be prepared
with the relevant skills related to these
technologies, such as security, networking,
business application development, and most
of all, services.
Looking forward
Technology is expanding at a fast pace and
is a key driver in executing businesses today,
with technology services being in demand
like never before, it will always be a case of
updating skills according to the demands of
the day. There will always be a gap between
demand and supply of skills in the IT market,
but it can be reduced with consistent
commitment and efforts from all stakeholders
– vendors, distributors and resellers.
I believe that channel stakeholders
have realised that hiring, training and
retaining resources is key to maintaining
their profitability. Once you have the
right talent on board, retaining them
becomes a challenge, considering the many
motivations such as extra remuneration,
perks and growth opportunities offered by
competitors. This process begins at the time
of hiring resources, when you can determine
their commitment towards growing their
career within your organisation. Providing
them with regular and timely training helps
them enhance their skills. In today’s scenario,
highly skilled and capable staff are in high
demand. However, your ability to retain
them is dependent on the opportunities you
provide them for growth, the right incentives
and the right motivation.