Vendors and distributors need to seek out partners that are willing to take risks and break from conventional trends to address emerging and future market opportunities. ...
Many people openly question the viability of distribution in a future market dominated by services and recurring-revenue models. Services will dominate, but we’ll always have product to move, and distribution is already evolving to avoid the death so frequently predicted. ...
Many channel executives believe partner tiers are a thing of the past and replaceable by new systems. Nevertheless, tiers are essential and will persist even as the channel evolves....
Technology vendors are facing the need to change their business and sales models. They find such change is hard because different generations have different attitudes toward how things should be done....
Billions of edge and IoT devices are flooding the Internet. Fog computing offers greater control and management than conventional cloud computing. Getting these devices and services to market is the bigger challenge....
As more partners transform themselves into professional services organizations, vendors will need to adapt to a channel in which loyalty is less important and relevancy is paramount. ...
Microsoft’s launch of its Microsoft Managed Desktop service sent shockwaves through the channel, which is dominated by managed services. Vendors should have managed services, but they need to take partners into consideration. Here’s why. ...
Business intelligence provides clearer pathways to success by reducing decision-making risks. Required is data, and vendors need to develop programs that make information an exchangeable currency with partners and customers. ...
Articulating goals and designing programs strategically can go a long way toward successful partner engagement....
Vendors often start channel transformation processes with the notion that they need more and new partners. They might, but they truly won’t know for sure until they define what they need to do to address market opportunities....
Transactional products are losing value, and that means vendors must get more creative in how they approach the market with commoditized products. ...
With strategic investments, vendors can steer partner conversations away from margins and monetary incentives....