Organisations of all sizes are speeding up their move to digital transformation as business and working landscapes experience rapid and dramatic changes in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Companies both large and small are not only transforming their businesses, but also the way they buy and consume technology.
Increasingly, they are looking to an “everything as a service” consumption model, which could leave some traditional resellers out in the cold.
Thibault Dousson, country GM of Lenovo Africa.
“This is why Lenovo launched its Lenovo 360 framework,” explains Thibault Dousson, country GM of Lenovo Africa. “Lenovo 360 helps partners capitalise on the new services-led and solutions-based opportunity with their customers to safeguard their existing business and drive additional revenue streams.”
Lenovo 360 provides partners with easier access to the entire Lenovo portfolio across devices, infrastructure, and services and solutions.
At its heart, Lenovo 360 merges the partner programmes of the different Lenovo divisions: Intelligent Devices Group (IDG), the core PC and IoT business; Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG); and the Solutions and Services Group (SSG), focused on verticals and services.
“Lenovo 360 is a foundation for a global programme that offers unique benefits to specialised partners. It has a basis in growth, customer acquisition, and solution competencies that trigger an expansive set of benefits to our partners.
“The programme will provide the tools and processes to make engagement, pricing, quoting, partner protection, and support efficient and reliable. It will simplify how we engage and drive speed to price and time to revenue.
“So our partners now have access to everything: from devices to data centre solutions,” he explains. “In the changing business landscape, Lenovo 360 seizes the opportunity to equip partners with a portfolio that reflects the full spectrum of customer needs from device, to infrastructure, to services, and beyond.”
Dousson cites statistics showing that, today, the services industry comprises 70% of the global economy. “Organisations are projected to spend $355-billion on Managed Service Providers (MSPs) globally by 2026. And 78% of global small and medium enterprises (SMEs) either already use, or plan to use, an MSP.”
This changing market means that partners have to offer new and compelling solutions. “The Lenovo 360 framework is designed to produce solutions with these challenges in mind and is aimed at delivering four business outcomes for partners : Enabling greater workforce productivity and collaboration; providing infrastructure flexibility; sustainability improvements; and tailored, industry-specific solutions.”
Lenovo is a channel-focused vendor, bringing 100% of its solutions to market through its partners.
“We know that some competitors are choosing to take more business direct in response to market challenges,” Dousson point out. “But Lenovo 360 reaffirms our commitment as a channel-first company by offering partners more ways to build and diversify their revenue streams through service-led and solutions-based opportunities.
Organisations today are looking to technology to enable new and innovative business models and this means solutions can no longer be siloed, but have to address all areas of the business.
“One of the great benefits of doing business in South Africa is that we can see what’s happening in the rest of the world, so we are ready for changes in our market,” Dousson says.
“One of the most important realisations that companies are coming to is that they can use information to create value in their businesses. And you can’t do that by focusing on one department, or employing a single set of technologies.”
He cites the example of smart cities, where realtime management is needed for data coming from or being relayed to PCs on people’s desks, servers in the data centre, or IoT devices in the field.
“In fact, a lot of companies in retail, financial services, education, government and more are starting to use realtime data to provide better services, better output and better security.
“So customers are eager to find solutions that are integrated and offer them the services they require. And this means channel partners have to be involved across the customer’s business – and with access to a wide range of solutions.”
In this environment, the reseller has to be a trusted technology partner, offering a rich solution set.
“In time, customers will be less worried about how much their technology costs and more concerned with the value it offers,” says Dousson. “Partners need to be in a position to offer a business solution that happens to include PCs, tablets, servers and services.”
This is where Lenovo 360 comes in, giving customers access to a wider range of products and services, while giving them the tools to add real value to their customers.
“It gives them stability,” he says. “So they are not at the mercy of whatever happens simply on one side of their business, and helps them to create more value in the long-term.
“Lenovo 360 helps our resellers to stop thinking about the product, but start offering a full solution.”
Lenovo’s financial results demonstrate how important technology is in end user customers’ journey to digitalisation, with dramatic increases in revenue across all the groups.
“It seems that the strategy put in place three or four years ago has come to fruition,” Dousson comments. “And we have doubled our investment in research and development (R&D) to ensure we stay ahead of the curve.”
Trends like work from home, hybrid cloud, a move to e-commerce and increasing digitalisation suggest the growth trend will continue in the years to come.
And, with Lenovo 360, channel partners are well-positioned to reap the benefits, Dousson points out.
How to join Lenovo One
For resellers, getting access to all the Lenovo One benefits is literally as easy as going online and signing up, says Dousson.
“For those who sign up to Lenovo 360, we offer them all the tools they need, all the training and certification, to close any gaps they might have so they can start selling across the portfolio.”
“We believe Lenovo 360 is the right thing for us and for our channel partners and we are putting a lot of resources and impetus behind it,” Dousson explains.
“Our aim is to increase the market coverage and make it easier for partners to work with us, gain market share and participate in the many new opportunities out there.”
Partners can sign up, and gain access to everything they need on the Lenovo Partner Portal