How to Transform Your Channel to Reap Benefits

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Over the past few years, the manufacturing industry has begun to embrace the seismic shift towards a consumption model that not only allows tech vendors to scale their businesses but also makes their financials risk averse. This shift towards achieving a predictable revenue model has also forced tech vendors to reprioritize. In order to increase margins, accelerate recurring revenue and directly benefit from the As a Service economy, some vendors are focusing on transforming their channel program to enable their partners to handle recurring revenue and bundle hardware, software, and services.

The push for this radical change is a response to a noticeable shift in business buyers’ behavior, that of flexibility in the way they consume technology. They want affordability, options, and the capabilities of  “pay-as-you-go” services. As a result, tech vendors are now beginning to offer  Anything as a Service (XaaS) bundles, such as Device as a Service, or Workplace as a Service, through their channel partners by including software and services alongside their core products. Check out more on how technology vendors are reaping the rewards of the As a Service economy in our White Paper.

According to a survey by TSIA, 50% of companies with transactional revenue models – models based on one-time selling of products – reported a churn of 10% or more in their bookings. In contrast, only about 23% of the companies that have adopted selling recurring services saw a similar drop. Even during the pandemic, vendors offering subscription models witnessed a deceleration in growth but not a decline in revenue.[1]

Empowering channel partners is crucial to a sustainable subscription model

To benefit fully from the subscription model, it’s imperative for tech vendors to enable their channel partners that may lack suitable tools and processes. So, while these partners drive product adoption and integration, upsell and cross-sell their services, they need continuous support from vendors to customize their offerings. 

  • Partner Programs: Vendors must adapt their partner programs to align with the new subscription model and offer support around marketing and sales, tools and technologies and employee training to bridge the gap between their own offerings and the demands of the market.
  • Market Development Funds (MDF): MDF are a great way to fund eCommerce storefronts or white-labelled marketplaces that can be customized and branded as per the partner’s limitations or needs.

Centralize multiple backend operations on one platform

As businesses migrate from transactional models to consumption models, the complexity in the integration of disparate IT systems on both the vendor and the provider side grows exponentially. As a result, the transition is often hindered by additional expense on resources, support, and maintenance. However, because the rewards from such a model are higher in the long run, organizations must not see this as a daunting exercise but strive to automate and unify their operations.

  • Simplify and unify channel operations: to grow the business, channel programs need to generate new partnerships and nurture existing ones. Often the challenge is enabling resellers to indirectly integrate with inventory, manage product information and extensive catalogs, and to handle contracts and agreements. Add multi-tier deployments to scale across multiple geographies, currencies and languages and it becomes a cumbersome task to tackle. Therefore, centralization of product onboarding and distribution, and everything in between, should be orchestrated through one platform. This of course also leads to a shorter time to market and reduces the risk of multiple system failures and unexpected downtimes.

Creating an ecosystem is the key

Unlike a linear supply chain, ecosystems form clusters around customer needs, and tech vendors aren’t untouched by this revolution. In a Forrester survey, 76% of the business leaders agreed that current business models will be unrecognizable in five years’ time. The main agent for this dramatic shift will be the adoption of dynamic ecosystems. Another Forrester forecast states that 17% of B2B transactions will flow via e-commerce and marketplaces by 2023.

  • XaaS bundles: To thrive in the subscription economy and benefit from an ecosystem, vendors and providers need to design innovative XaaS bundles. Bundling is not only a gateway to predictable revenue and growth but also a requirement for a sustainable ecosystem.
  • Catalog expansion: Catalog expansion is not limited to onboarding new products and solutions it can also include pre-integrated solutions provided by other vendors and resellers within the ecosystem.
  • Building marketplaces: Building a marketplace is all about creating the most valuable touchpoint. As mentioned above, channels can use MDF to create their own, white-labelled marketplaces.

Creating an ecosystem marketplace, however, has its challenges. Managing a diverse set of suppliers and processes, continuous interoperability issues, the complexities of developer programs and localization needs for diverse markets.

CloudBlue’s platform and network can help. Partners can integrate their hardware, software and services to create the final product within one platform and launch the offerings in multiple countries and currencies. Tech vendors can easily onboard resellers and distributors; manage catalogs and product listings; and processes for ordering, fulfilment and billing. This translates to minimal time to market and boosts ARR.

  1. Forecasting In Uncertainty: Our Latest US Tech Market Forecast Shows A 2.5% Decline In 2020 And -0.4% In 2021. Forrester Blogs

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Mike Jennett, Director of CloudBlue Platform Strategy, is an accomplished business and technology executive. With a deep focus on product development and go-to-market strategy, he plays a pivotal role driving strategic growth and market expansion. Mike’s career is characterized by his adeptness in driving technological advancements and his commitment to leading digital transformations with experience including IDC where he was VP of the Mobility and Digital Transformation IEP practices, and HP where he held numerous leadership roles. Mike’s expertise is also reflected in his published works and contributions to multiple tech publications. Mike holds a B.A. from California Polytechnic University.
Having previously to strategic product management, agile transformations, and user experience in CloudBlue, Taylor Giddens heads the Services & Solutions team where he ensures smooth delivery, operations and solution growth for our partners and customers.

The team includes technical account management, managed services, support, custom solution development, and customer enablement.

Prior to CloudBlue, his resume boasts leadership of some of the world’s largest companies during their digital transformations and marketplace launches. Taylor is a practitioner of servitude leadership when it comes to enabling his team to drive positive outcomes on the road to operational excellence.
Laurens van Alphen, a visionary entrepreneur with over 29 years of internet technology expertise, serves as Director of Technical Managed Services at CloudBlue, responsible for Operations and Delivery of CloudBlue SaaS.

As a Dutch racing champion and car enthusiast, he brings the same drive to the tech realm, steering Keenondots from a managed hosting firm to a global cloud enablement leader. Laurens is celebrated for his outcome-driven leadership, deep industry insight, and passion for balancing business innovation with client engagement.
Lincoln Lincoln is CloudBlue’s Head of Global Sales; having been with the company since November 2017. Leading CloudBlue’s global go-to-market organization, he’s responsible for driving accelerated and sustained mutual growth with CloudBlue’s customers and partners, as well as forming new customer partnerships across the Vendor and Provider ecosystem. As part of CloudBlue’s leadership team he is responsible the organisation’s revenue and continued market leadership by delivering and supporting products, services and solutions to organizations in established and new markets around the world.

Before joining CloudBlue, Lincoln was AppDirect’s Regional Director, Asia Pacific & Japan, responsible for forming, building and leading AppDirect’s business and operations across the APJ geography. He built and led AppDirect’s fastest growing and highest performing region globally within 3yrs.

Before joining AppDirect, Lincoln was EMC’s Practice Manager, Cloud Service Providers, APJ, working with the leading Service Providers to maximise their Cloud Business presence & market success. Lincoln joined EMC in 2007, and has over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry, having been based out of Singapore, Australia and the UK. Prior to EMC, he was in range of sales and channel positions at Symantec and VERITAS.

Lincoln has an Honours degree in Business Administration from Kingston University in the United Kingdom.
Brent Clooney is the Executive Director and Associate General Counsel for Ingram Micro Inc., and lead counsel for CloudBlue.

Brent is a Canadian based corporate lawyer with more than 20 years of experience as a strategic legal advisor both in private practice and as in-house counsel to large multi-national companies. Prior to joining Ingram Micro in 2008, he worked at a well-respected corporate law firm in Toronto, Canada and later served as general counsel for Toshiba Canada. During his 15-year tenure at Ingram Micro, he has held positions of increasing complexity and responsibility, and since being promoted to his current role in 2022, Brent is the legal lead for both Ingram Micro’s Canadian and global cloud businesses, as well as CloudBlue.

Brent holds a law degree (LL.B.) from Queen’s University, a Psychology degree (B.A. Honours) from Lakehead University, and has been admitted to the bar in Ontario, Canada since 2002.
Anurag serves as the Head of Product Management for CloudBlue and is responsible for product direction and driving innovation. His leadership has been marked by a keen focus on customer needs, growing the ISV ecosystem, and ensuring the continual evolution of CloudBlue’s product portfolio.

Anurag joined Ingram Micro in 2017 and has been instrumental in, positioning CloudBlue as an industry leading monetization platform for MSP’s, Telco’s and Distributors. Previously Anurag worked at Oracle and Microsoft where he managed many technology projects and programs.
As VP of Engineering of CloudBlue, Rony oversees the development and engineering efforts of the company. He is a recognized leader with more than 25 years of experience in Technology and Product.

Prior to joining CloudBlue Rony lead the R&D efforts at Tripwire acquired by Thoma Bravo, and Cedexis acquired by Citrix. Rony is a leader with extensive experience in transforming both complex technology problems into products that customers love and disjointed organizations into agile high performing teams.
Coen is a distinguished leader and entrepreneur in the realm of cloud technology. Currently serving as CEO of Keenondots and the Global Director of CloudBlue SaaS. He is passionate about driving innovation, fostering collaboration, and leading high-performing teams to achieve transformative results.

With a background as Managing Director of INTO Cloud and a pivotal role as Director of Products of KPN, he brings a wealth of experience in steering organizations through the complexities of the digital landscape.

Beyond the boardroom, Coen is a marathon enthusiast, demonstrating endurance and discipline in pursuit of both professional and personal goals.
Alyson has over twenty years of experience in demand generation, marketing automation and data management. She is responsible for leading the strategy and direction of the company’s brand, performance, and digital marketing.

Prior to CloudBlue, Alyson served as Ingram Micro’s Director of Global Business Intelligence Marketing Automation driving channel partner campaigns. Her tenure in marketing leadership at prestigious companies such as Western Digital, Ocean Institute celebrates redefining marketing campaigns and building top performing teams based on trust, experimentation, and results.

Alyson resides with her husband and three children in Orange County and is an active volunteer and donor within her children’s sports and education programs.

Darek Tasak is leading Customer Success & Value Creation for CloudBlue. In his role, he looks after CloudBlue customers globally during the entire lifecycle of our relationship: from the initial on-boarding, through in-life account management, always ensuring they build successful businesses leveraging our technology. Additionally, he is also in charge of Partnership & Alliances, as well as Pricing Management for everything we commercialize.


Before CloudBlue, Darek managed Ingram Micro’s Services division for hi-tech customers in Europe & APAC. His prior experiences include also launching and leading pan-European services business for TDSynnex, as well as strategy consulting with Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

As President of CloudBlue, Uddhav is a distinguished leader and visionary with nearly two decades of platform-building experience. He is an industry leader in digital commerce, the subscription economy, and monetization platforms.


Notably, at SAP, he spearheaded the transformation of their platform business into a multi-cloud platform-as-a-service, offering enterprise and developer-friendly subscription models. At Pure Storage, he championed the efforts to successfully disrupt the storage industry by creating revolutionary Storage-as-a-service, AIOps-as-a-service, and Disaster Recovery-as-a-service offerings with cutting-edge features and establishing a sophisticated subscription commerce infrastructure that is channel-friendly.


At CloudBlue, Uddhav guides and empowers businesses to rethink their monetization strategies by unlocking the power of digital ecosystems and marketplaces. CloudBlue provides enterprises with a mature multi-tier, multi-channel marketplace and monetization platform that enables usage-based subscription models and global delivery of Anything-as-a-Service solutions. Uddhav has played a pivotal role in shaping the future of the subscription economy through his innovative thinking and impactful contributions.

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