As vendors, distributors and channel partners jockey for position in an IT economy that is increasingly services-based, intangible borders that have historically separated these three groups become increasingly blurry. With all that blurriness comes inevitable conflict over which functions should belong to which role in the value chain.
This debate is just one of the discussions that will be under way in Denver this week, where CompTIA is hosting our annual planning meeting for our industry councils. This event brings together representatives from the distributor, partner and vendor communities with an eye towards assessing key issues and initiatives that should be pursued during the upcoming calendar year.
A number of action items are likely to be chosen for further evaluation, some of which may lead to the launch of various research projects, communications tools, vendor neutral educational content, or ideas for new certifications and trustmarks that will acknowledge expertise in a given area.
Representatives from the three constituencies recently participated in an informal survey that asked them to prioritize a list of nearly 30 issues and inflection points facing the industry today.
Strategies for effective differentiation in a value-added services environment emerged as the #1 choice among all three camps. More specifically, the council members expressed interest in the key services and skills that are most needed by the customers, most profitable to the partners and most efficiently enacted.
Channel conflict among vendors, channel partners and distributors in an increasingly cloud-based economy, along with the establishment of sensible demarcation points between vendor services and partner services, are two areas that also scored strongly. This is a particularly sensitive topic because all three of these groups are looking for new ways to increase their market presence, profitability and relevance to the customer, regardless of whether the client favors on-prem solutions or cloud-based alternatives. In some cases, the various activities have caused the different industry roles to run afoul of one another.
The council members also expressed keen interest in how to develop customized sales tactics for different business units within the customer organization. While it goes without saying that the IT department is interested in ones and zeros, and the finance department is interested in dollars and cents, the group seeks to better understand where the common denominators diverge from aspects that are tightly linked to one or more department. What are the key care-abouts, and what are the best ways to address them? Stay tuned. We're about to make some headway here.
Other notable subjects include how to segment and efficiently pursue the SMB space, compensation in the new value chain, and how to effectively leverage the "flexible workforce" strategy, wherein a higher number of functions are outsourced rather than operated by internal teams. In this environment, "tiger teams" are assembled in support of a specific project, and then disassemble at the time of conclusion. While this structure looks quite favorable on the balance sheet, it comes with a number of innate challenges, many of which are related to proprietary information at the internal level as well as at the customer level.
More than 30 industry representatives will be meeting with the CompTIA team over a two-day period. The event will be led by Annette Taber, CompTIA's vice president of Industry Strategies, and Ken Presti, CompTIA's director of Industry Advisory Councils.
A lively discussion is anticipated.
