What is reseller management?


Reseller management is the concept of managing the relationship and organizing all the technology tools, business processes, and sales enablement assets and training with indirect sellers. The support and processes often include elements of provisioning, billing, onboarding, customer support, and managing licenses. In any go-to-market strategy, channel sales are vital for maximizing growth thanks to their impact on revenue.




Contents

  1. What are resellers?
  2. Why should you build a reseller network?
  3. What is a reseller partnership?
  4. How are reseller partnerships incentivized?
  5. Why is reseller management automation important?
  6. What is reseller management software?
  7. What are some features and functionalities of reseller management software?
  8. What are some common pros and cons of a reseller partnership?


What are resellers?


Resellers are partners of companies or individuals reselling the provider’s services, products, or bundles to their customers. Every company that sits between a provider and a customer is a reseller, with the relationship being controlled by a reseller subscription or partnership – which is an agreement on how they will do business.

By building networks of resellers, a company can solidify their control over many market segments that would otherwise be out of their reach. Specifically, reseller accounts can be used for the international distribution of cloud products that follow country-specific regulations.


Why Should You Build a Reseller Network?


Reseller networks are vital in reaching new audiences for a provider to sell their products and services. The reseller partner brings sales expertise and a proven track record. Reseller networks are a key part of any go-to-market strategy, for the following reasons:

  • Access quality sales teams  
  • Drive product related customer loyalty
  • Increase geographic reach 
  • Grow the network of clients 
  • Improve brand recognition 


What is a Reseller Partnership?

Reseller partnerships are a type of indirect channel sales. This means a partner, or a third party, sits between the provider and the customer, making sales for the provider. This is partnership is vital as it offers the provider of the services or products an external sales specific organization to grow revenue.  

There are two main types of resellers – traditional and value added. Value added resellers (VARs) sell a vendor’s product and then add on their own products or services, such as consulting, training, management, implementation – creating their own value (and extra revenue) in the form of a bundle. There are higher margins for value added resellers, but also more complexity in their operations.  

Traditional resellers are again a partner or third party that sells products or services for the provider, however, they modify and add less extras for the end customer. In general, margins for traditional resellers are lower, however, their operational model is less complex.


How are reseller partnerships incentivized?

The main way resellers are compensated / incentivized is with a portion of the sale of the product or service. Here are some further ways of incentivizing channel partners:  

  • Percentage of sales 
  • Improved account services  
  • Discounted products 
  • Premium page listings
  • Exclusive rights


Why is reseller management automation important?


Automation is important for providers and resellers due to the number of processes they both need to control, and for the scalability of the partnership.

These relationships often span multiple territories, currencies, languages, cloud services, and so on. Streamlined and automated management is essential in keeping efficiency at a high level.

What is Reseller Management?

What is reseller management software? 


Reseller management software will generally allow reseller staff members to create new users, define payment methods for future payments, select currencies for customer billing, and track financial activities.

The reseller management software calculates the reseller’s cost at all levels, based on the end-customer price and sales margins configured in the system. A reseller should be able to view all charges applied to a specific account within a specified period, as well as the costs incurred by both parties. 

The software might include a reseller marketplace, controlled by the vendor company, which is a digital product catalog to sell products, services or bundles directly to the end-customers or reseller partners. The services reseller management software have often include backup and disaster recovery, business applications, cloud enablement, communications and collaboration, digital marketing, infrastructure, and security. 

Having a properly configured reseller environment will allow for automation and streamlining of the onboarding process.

What are some features and functionalities of reseller management software?


Reseller management software should allow the provider to control the onboarding and the management of resellers, from any geography and in any language needed. The software should also provide a full overview of business performance, from invoices to subscriptions, taxation, and local pricing.  

The software should also allow for communication between the provider and the reseller, in terms of push notifications or newsletters, which can also be used to communicate with end customers. Order and promotion management is another vital functionality, allowing businesses to scale up operations and control margins, and revenue.  

It should also help with monitoring and automating any IT service sold, and if the service is charged on a usage-based billing contract, the software will help to increase revenue, and of course, reduce churn.





What are some common pros and cons of a Reseller Partnership?







Ready to learn more about reseller management?


CloudBlue is a powerful XaaS platform that will help you grow revenue. Here are some resources for more information:


Partner Channel Management

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XaaS Economy

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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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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