Joel Sorensen, CIO of Hantover Inc. and member of the CompTIA End User Commission, shares his thoughts on channel partners.
Channel partners, armed and ready with sales skills to address the needs of customer business units, sometimes find themselves at odds with their customers’ information technology staff, who feel threatened, or even completely bypassed, by people they view as external competitors. The net result can be a lot of angst and wasted energy for all parties concerned, particularly the CIO who is trying to leverage the skills of his channel partner without triggering internal stress and conflict.
While this scenario might sound a little bit dramatic, it’s a problem every CIO encounters at one time or another.
As the CIO of IT at of Hantover, a distributor to the food processing and general manufacturing industries based in Kansas City, I ran into this situation when a channel partner began pitching our business unit for the adoption of a new ERP solution. I don’t think the partner was specifically trying to go around the IT department in order to avoid them. They were merely trying to get to the source of the best information and key decision makers. But the move did not sit well with the IT team, creating varying degrees of skepticism and resentment.
I have also seen similar reactions to initiatives in which we are exploring the possibility of outsourcing some support functions. The IT team is reluctant to lose control, and they’re also concerned about the possibility that the function may be taken over by people who don’t know what they’re doing, which would create more rather than less work for the IT team. While I would like to keep such concerns in check, I also see the need to outsource some of the lower-end functions in order to enable my IT team to focus on higher value initiatives.
So what gives? Do we force the channel partners to go through the IT department so that IT can maintain visible control or does IT need to elevate itself from the traditional technical role into a true business enabler role that operates at a higher level and leads these key business initiatives?
The answer is a little bit of both. Channel partners should keep in mind that IT is often more receptive to proposals when they are involved in the discussions from the outset and there is a clear understanding of business and technical implications. You can almost hear IT say, “Here we go. A bunch of new guys from another company are about to dump new technology into our laps. They are going to be gone as soon as the check clears, and we’re going to have to deal with it moving forward, for better or worse.”
Thus, partners need to make the extra effort to understand the customer’s environment and fully engage IT in discussing the full impact – the good and the bad – of the potential offering. This creates the level of trust and understanding needed to fully discuss the benefits of your proposed solution and demonstrate where that solution might actually make our lives easier and identify potential negative impacts that need consideration.
Meanwhile, IT often needs to strengthen its understanding of the business unit’s objectives and be ready to offer proactive and direct advice on how technology can be leveraged to increase revenue and profitability. In many cases, this is all about changing our mindset and developing a better understanding of the key business drivers. Some IT people will never get there, but it’s very important that the key leaders within the IT organization can do this. It is a process and not an event. It takes time. People fall off the wagon quite often because this is not necessarily in our comfort zone as IT professionals. Yet it is a transition that we must make.
If IT is going to remain relevant, we need to move beyond the traditional realm of servers, systems, etc., and act in unison with business leadership on revenue drivers and strategic goals and objectives. This can require a significant retooling of staff, skill-sets and job duties, and oftentimes this transition will need to be made within budget constraints and a heavy workload. There is no silver bullet, and I don’t have the answers on exactly how to do it. But the key starting point is to focus on where you need to be and what the end-result looks like, and take steps to get there.
At that point, we can all develop a much clearer understanding of how our roles are evolving, and thereby become more comfortable in playing a lead role with the support of channel partners and other members of the value chain.
Joel Sorensen is CIO of Hantover Inc. and a member of CompTIA’s End User Commission.
