Channel Partners, Make Way for Customer Partners

With increasing focus on digital transformation and the rise of SMAC era, it’s time now for Channel Partners to move beyond their traditional role and evolve as ‘Customer Partners’

Amongst the various takeaways from the ISODA Tech Summit held in Colombo last week, two have stayed with me and have been a focal point of many of my discussions. First, channel partners now need to think of themselves as ‘customer partners’ and need to move beyond the products and services they represent. Second, and more importantly, the channel community needs to rapidly expand its relationships beyond the CIOs and IT buyers they have been traditionally working with.

The ‘Customer Partner’ gem came from L Subramanyan, CEO, Trivone during a panel discussion on digital transformation, which comprised of the media community. The panel as well as the audience seemed to agree that while it is only now that the term ‘Digital Transformation’ has started getting a lot of attention from all corners of the industry, it has been in existence since the time organizations set out on their automation/ computerization journey. The reason why digital transformation is now becoming the most discussed word in the IT circuit is because this entire process of computerization has tremendously accelerated over the past few quarters and it is only now that users, specifically consumers, have started to see its clear advantages. The opportunities that this transformation presents to the entire IT industry are enormous and end-user departments of organizations are waking up to the difference that IT can bring in.

Given this scenario, change is inevitable for channel partners. They need to move beyond (and move fast) their traditional role of offering services and products to customers. They need to understand the customer requirement and evolve as customer partners.

A related point emerged in a recent SMAC panel: as the opportunity in the SMAC space is enormous, it may be difficult for these partners to position themselves as total SMAC partners. Although, cloud as an area has been around for possibly close to a decade, the other three areas, Social, Mobile and Analytics, are fairly new and therefore also complex and surrounded with their challenge. The need for these three areas is mainly driven by the end users (read CXOs), over the cloud that is mainly the purview of the CIO/IT decision maker.

Given the current need of the hour, channel partners need to immediately and actively extend their relationships from the CIO to business users for the three much bandied technology areas. This again brings us back to our earlier inference and at the cost of repetition, I emphasize Subramanyan’s point: “Channel Partners now need to become Customer Partners.” That said, Channel Partners also need to rapidly decide whether they want to be present across all constituencies of SMAC or just specialize in one of these areas.

Overall, the event was very well-attended and garnered positive response from the channel community. The event featured two soft skill sessions, which were very well-received. Prashant Bhavaraju, Director Marketing of Trianz spoke on the intriguing topic of CEO branding and its importance, and Chand Narayan, CEO of Hum Consulting spoke about leadership mettle.

The event was attended by close to 90 channel partners; with sponsors and organizers the total crowd was close to 120 people. Post session interactions, clearly reflected the buzz these sessions had created, giving everyone points to discuss and deliberate. ISODA had also ensured that the evening had meaningful networking as well as enjoyment for all.

The event was sponsored by well-known organizations, which included (in alphabetical order) Adweb Technologies, Cyberoam, Fractalio, Gemalto, Hitachi, HP, Inflow, Intel Security, Mindarray, Red Hat, Symantec and Symphony Summit. Last but not the least, what was heartening to see was a unanimous voice for the need of IP creation in India.

Hoshie Ghaswalla

(hoshieg@cybermedia.co.in)