FINAL WORD
For channel partners, customer
experience must be placed at the
centre of their business models.
D
igital Transformation
continues to be the phrase
on everyone’s mind in the
channel. Regardless of size
or industry, organisations are
reaping the rewards of shifting their IT
approach and using new technology to grow
their customer base, scale operations and
ultimately drive profit.
However, as Digital Transformation must
begin at the core of an organisation, it is only
logical that they rethink their business model.
Fundamentally, technology underpins
processes throughout the business, so core
operations will naturally need reviewing and
in some cases, a complete overhaul. As this
occurs, roles throughout the organisation
will be both created and redefined, with new
ways of working agreed.
Many businesses are using this period
of transition to rebuild themselves as
customer-centric organisations. Investments
in technology must prove their worth by
improving the human experience, and the
ROI of an entire implementation is defined
by this measure. For channel partners,
customer experience must be placed at
the centre of their business models to
adequately understand and service their
clients. But, this is not easy and business
leaders are having to adapt rapidly to
escalating customer expectations.
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
Issue 22
Changing businesses,
changing audience
Channel resellers have experienced a
dramatic change in their target audience,
and as a result have had to completely
rethink their sales approach and how they
are engaging with their customers.
Partners that traditionally dealt in
hardware-based solutions are now finding
themselves on the brink of disruption, with
a new perspective of how technology adds
value to their business. As a result, vendors
are evolving their solutions to reflect new
customer priorities, from the Internet of
Things (IoT) to Machine Learning, Artificial
intelligence (AI) and increasing productivity.
Casting aside hardware-based CAPEX
expenditures, there is an expectation
for cloud-based managed services built
on consumption models that best fit the
customer’s needs, be it a subscription, use
basis or outcomes-based models.
As technology becomes a day-to-day
board-level issue, channel partners have had
to begin addressing the needs of new decision
makers. Traditionally, selling technology to IT
leaders was very much the norm.
These stakeholders had a full
understanding of the company’s technical
needs, existing IT estate and would be given
full spending approval from the business and
finance leaders. Rather than developing the
direction of the business, IT expenditure was
simply seen as a cost of existence.
As technology accelerated at a pace far
quicker than businesses could continually
adopt, the market experienced a pivotal
moment when business and finance
leaders questioned the value-add of
new technologies and regular hardware
upgrades. As such, the decision making
power shifted away from the IT stakeholder
towards finance and business figureheads.
This customer base has an altogether
different set of priorities, and resellers
have been under pressure to adjust their
approach to focus on the high level and
c-suite conversations.
Providing the ability to drive
productivity and enable top-line growth
are critical requirements that must be
addressed by resellers looking to gain
traction with this audience.
Alongside this, all newly implemented
tech must remain consistently accountable,
making the ability to measure performance
and have full visibility over the IT
infrastructure a must.
Furthermore, in the most successful
organisations, the ultimate priority of
the c-level is to address customer needs.
Partners must understand and enable
this if they are to resonate with a high-
level audience.
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