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Adding Value to Wireless VARs

By Rich Tehrani March 13, 2008
Originally posted on Rich Tehrani’s VoIP Blog
 
In the communications space there has been accelerating progress for decades. During the 1980s, there was IVR, voicemail and unified messaging. During the 1990s, there was CTI (TAPI,TSAPI, etc), international callback, the PC-PBX and later the IP-PBX.

This decade has introduced open source, unified communications, communications as a service, communications-enabled business processes and mobility—plus a host of other hot technologies. Yet, resellers speaking at conferences indicate there is still much more growth left in the communications market.

Innovations are not only occurring on the business side; one would make the argument that consumer telephony has leapfrogged its counterpart in business.

The world seems to have gone smartphone-crazy. Initiatives from company after company demonstrate new ways to integrate powerful handheld computing devices into a businesses’ core communications infrastructure. For the sake of not discriminating, it should be noted that even the intellectually-challenged devices need to connect seamlessly to corporate telecom systems.

For typical resellers, this may present a challenge; such companies traditionally have not been mobility experts. It may be useful for value-added resellers (VARs) to turn to companies that specialize in mobility in order to better serve customers.
 
One such company is Westcon, a specialty distributor in networking, convergence, security and mobility that recently announced MobilityPoint, a program designed to tackle the opportunity mobility opportunity.
 
Specifically, the company's new program delivers resources and capabilities to deliver business value. One important area Westcon is focusing on is sales-enablement—helping resellers position mobility solutions around the desires of the customer.

A typical reseller might go to market with a widget and show its potential customers that all the things that product can do. Westcon helps VARs understand that succeeding in the mobility market is not just about selling widgets. The company leads the VAR through the process of showing customers how widgets can lower operating expenditures (OPEX) and boost productivity.

The idea here is that resellers need to stop focusing solely on widget sales and instead focus on value and selling solutions.

A good rule of thumb for VARs is to use one or fewer acronyms per sentence when selling to customers. Customers don't generally care about flavors of SIP and open source vagaries; instead, they want to know how a solution helps their business and makes them more successful.

The new Westcon program also focuses on VoWLAN/VoWiFi, and helps resellers stimulate demand in the market. This last point may be the most important. Duncan Potter, Westcon's CMO, explained that even the most successful reseller can use assistance in demand-generation. One common scenario: A reseller is successful selling and then spends a good deal of time installing and servicing its clients. The reseller then looks up and notices that the sales pipeline is completely dry.

This is exactly why resellers need partners like Westcon. The company understands reseller challenges and has devised a variety of programs targeted to help generate success in the market sweet spots—networking, convergence, security and mobility.

A big differentiator of MobilityPoint is the manufacturer participants in the company’s program, which include Aruba, Cisco, Hitachi Cable, Nokia, Meru, Motorola, Nortel and Trapeze. This is an A-list for sure and should give resellers some added level of confidence in exploring the benefits of such a program.

Resellers need to spend more time learning. In past decades, traditional interconnects were good if they could rapidly pull wire and connect phone systems. Today's technology reseller has to be a chameleon, knowing many technologies including the ones outlined above. Resellers need to understand how these technologies integrate with one another. Most importantly, they must listen to customers and help solve their problems.

It is good to see distributors like Westcon putting more skin in the game by partnering with their reseller customers in order to ensure these VARs are better educated and that the end customers are better served.

Remember that the "V" and "A" in "VAR" stand for "Value Added." Today's resellers are measured not by the wires they hang but by the value they add.
 

Don’t forget to check out IoTevolutionworld’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is Convergence in Telecommunication, brought to you by Comarch.

 
Rich Tehrani is President and Group Editor in Chief at TMC. In addition he is the Chairman of the world’s best attended IP Communications event, Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO. To read more of Rich’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He blogs for IoTevolutionworld here.
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