I just returned from Photizo’s Transform Global 2013 in Scottsdale, AZ and like last year’s event, I had a jam-packed schedule with not enough time to attend all the sessions I wanted to sit in on or see all the people I wanted to see. But I did walk out of there with more knowledge and nuggets of wisdom than I had before attending that I will share with you in the coming weeks.
This week I want to share some of the comments from a roundtable discussion, What Will the Channel Look Like in 2014? Participants included Ed Crowley, CEO of Photizo Group along with representatives from major players such as OKI Data, Synnex, Xerox, HP, Dealer Marketing Systems, a couple of dealers (one U.S. and one Australian), and additional participants. What follows are a few of the sound bites from the session that I think you’ll find interesting. These may only be a snapshot of what was discussed at the roundtable, but they still provide a flavor of what’s happening in the channel at least from the perspective of the roundtable participants, particularly as the channel continues to shift towards services. Altogether, these comments may underscore some of the things you’re witnessing in your business and shed additional light on the changes taking place within the channel.
- The North American Channel (BTA) is stuck on MPS and the challenge is changing the business model, but while there’s still profit [from hardware] there’s little motivation to change.
- The clicks aren’t there anymore; people aren’t printing as much.
- The SMB market doesn’t have the knowledge of what these devices (MFPs) are capable of doing.
- MPS is a defensive measure for many Managed Service providers.
- What owners of IT services companies don’t know how to do is sell like the[BTA and office technology] channel or how to price and bundle.
- BTA has the in for [providing] Managed Network Services, but the window is closing.
- The BTA channel needs to recognize this massive channel (Managed Services). Managed Services is 100 percent recurring revenue for Managed Services providers.
- Most Managed Services Providers don’t sell hardware at all.
- BTA channel is the first channel to lead with [MNS] because of the relationships they have with their customers.
- A lot of the channel is still not charging for services and missing out on a huge revenue opportunity. The difference between the channels is going to dissipate.
- The barriers for entering into the MPS business are dropping drastically.
As you read through these comments, a few things are clear, and one is that on the services side of the business, competition will continue to grow while the BTA channel had better get moving to seize the services opportunity even as they continue to feel the pressure from their manufacturers to move hardware.
As far as the prospects for the channel in 2014, the consensus was that it is a channel that will remain in flux for the foreseeable future as the hardware-centric sales model shifts towards a services sales model even though there may not be any radical changes over the next 12 months. And as much as one may like to make a Federal case for this shift toward services being revolutionary, as one participant told me the next day, what’s going on in the channel is evolutionary and shouldn’t be all that shocking, a point that never really came up during the session.
