In the not-so-distant past, trade shows and conferences focused on the latest and greatest technologies, pushing resellers to make investments in new products or services.
Now, it’s more about how to survive – and perhaps even thrive – during tough economic times. In some cases, it means extending the life of a customer’s existing infrastructure, rather than trying to sell the latest and greatest. In other cases, it’s about revamping your business so you’ll be ready for the latest and greatest when business eventually picks up again. And it will.
Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM), at its 2009 Spring VentureTech Network Invitational, did exactly that, with a theme of “unite, collaborate, thrive.” The focus this year is on demand generation, sales and partnership.
Ingram also introduced a new senior director of channel marketing for Ingram Micro North America: John Fago (who took on additional responsibilities within the distie’s lead generation and marketing communications teams back in February). His job now will be to look after business intelligence efforts, channel marketing and customer communities.
In accordance with its theme of “unite, collaborate, thrive,” Ingram has launched a new business unit dedicated to Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) partners. At this point, it’s only available in the U.S. – so let’s hope this moves up to Canada soon. The business unit will provide resellers with access to dedicated resources, from vendor management to marketing to technical support to credit (and credit, in particular, is more important than ever these days).
The focus will be on all areas of Cisco technology, including the potentially lucrative unified communications and collaboration market, as well as more traditional network infrastructure and security solutions. The distie has also created an Ingram Micro Cisco SMARTnet Solution Team to help resellers grow their Cisco services and SMARTnet business.
This new business unit will include access to Ingram’s Configuration Support Center, Solution Center and SMARTnet team. The idea is to help resellers more easily establish a services practice, without having to make a significant investment in back-office infrastructure. We could see more of these offerings from disties and vendors as time goes by, if resellers are less willing (or able) to make those back-office investments. Having access to infrastructure provided by distributors or vendors – such as Ingram’s Configuration Support Center, for example – allows smaller resellers to compete with the big guys.
It comes back to one of Ingram’s key themes at VentureTech: partnership. This will be essential in coming months, especially for those resellers who are struggling with access to credit, who can’t afford to develop new back-office infrastructure or who are left in the lurch after customers delay and postpone IT projects. The Ingrams of the world can continue to show their value in the IT food chain, as well as penetrate the ever-elusive SMB market.
In these days, a self-centred approach to business isn’t going to get you far. Stepping on others to make a buck is likely to backfire (it always does, really, but even more so right now). The unintended benefit of tough times is that they tend to bring back a sense of community that often gets lost when the going is good. We often apply this to our personal lives, but it’s equally applicable to the business world.
The success of a reseller means the success of its distribution and vendor partners – not to mention the success of other resellers and the industry as a whole.