Following two highly productive CompTIA UK Channel Community meetings earlier in 2014, the year’s final meeting in London on 5 November saw the largest audience yet, a diverse group that spanned the IT industry spectrum from the UK and beyond.
The meeting, held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, featured a particularly strong agenda, including contributions from world-renowned members like Ricoh and Tech Data, and prominent industry commentators like TechMarketView.
In line with CompTIA’s aim of raising standards across the IT industry, the agenda was themed around “Driving Your Business Forward”. It included showing attendees how to access and use CompTIA’s extensive tools and resources, with real life examples demonstrating the critical business improvements that these can help to deliver.
Channel business specialist Gemma Telford, principal of The IT Marketing Agency, chaired the track entitled ‘Getting the Most Out of CompTIA Membership,’ in which members were shown not only how to access CompTIA’s resources but also how to make use of specific tools to actively build their business.
‘I think it’s true to say that many members are still not fully aware of the wealth of resources that CompTIA membership offers them,’ Telford said. ‘When we explained that members can use CompTIA’s marketing toolkit to rapidly create campaigns and generate leads through social media, for instance, that message was very warmly received by the audience.’
Simon Dobson, speaking in the second session of the track, put the point to the audience even more memorably: ‘Marketing is not a Band-Aid for your business when things go wrong — instead, it should be the foundation on which your business is built,’ he said. ‘Marketing and sales are just different stages of the same conversation. The CompTIA Marketing Toolkit gives you a huge resource pool to help you start and continue that conversation. Make use of it — no matter how small the beginnings, it can make a difference.’
Resources from CompTIA
Continuing the how-to theme, other tracks saw the presentation of a 10-step plan to help IT solutions providers penetrate vertical markets such as financial services, a guide to CompTIA training for vendor and distributor channel managers, and an exploration of how vendors and distributors can build better partner programs to reap long-term gains.
But above all, it was perhaps the emphasis on real-world case studies and success stories that really brought the benefits of CompTIA membership to life for the UK Channel Community.
Businesses like Beneman UK, Flying Fox IT Management, Mailprotector, Ricoh UK and Xerox made the meeting a success “because they all shared their most precious resource with the audience — their experience,” said Vaughan Shayler, director of CompTIA’s channel strategy.
Reinforced by industry insight from TechMarketView, plus the unveiling of the results of CompTIA’s brand new research on the State of the UK Channel, the meeting fully achieved its objective: putting attendees in touch with the industry tools, resources and experts that help them grow and improve their business. And, of course, ensuring they know how best to make use of them. We believe members will use all they learned during the day to go and implement, helping them to “drive their business forward”.
Learn more about joining CompTIA’s UK Channel Community and participating in its meetings, plus more from EMEA on our blog, including ways to maximise relationships between partners and vendors and highlights from the keynote address by legendary BBC presenter Maggie Philbin.
