With competition getting intense and opportunity getting smaller, it is a critical time for technology resellers to focus on their core competencies and create wining formulas for their success ahead. Getting involved into managed services for the SMB as well as enterprise segment can open up new horizon for the VAR community.
A large number of value added resellers in India, traditionally specialize in hardware sales, including selling PCs, laptops, servers etc to the SMB segment. In such a situation, positioning of VARs towards services such as remote monitoring of infrastructure and software as a service (SaaS) can create new business models, and at the same time help their SMB relations to grow in a positive direction.
With a fast paced convergence of mobiles and traditional IT happening at the SMB level, today’s SMB IT leaders look for end to end solution providers which can help them towards management of their applications an BYOD environments. This is where VARs can embrace new age technologies and create better value propositions for their SMB customers.
And as VARs consider consolidation of their offerings, it is very important to understand that their SMB customers are also going through a similar cycle and are engaged in consolidation. IT leaders are pairing down on the amount of technology purchases and their points of purchase as well. These IT leaders want to select only the most immediate and necessary equipment. This means technology resellers who offer an array of high-quality products with different levels of functionality are going to be in a better shape to meet their customers’ needs and create the much needed value proposition in the eyes of their SMB customers. And hence, availability of total solutions is the mantra.
In such a scenario, it is quite helpful for a SMB customer to get all their IT needs of laptops, PCs, servers, coming in from a single window which is also providing them with management of their services.
Customers are looking for resellers as “trusted advisors” to steer them to the hardware purchases yielding the best bang for their buck. Resellers who do this well will be rewarded with loyal customers in any economic condition.
Value is the new standard for making decisions on IT hardware in today’s economy, and resellers can drive value through their technology recommendations, factoring in durability, reliability, energy efficiency and the latest technologies.
