The events of 2020 have presented uncharted waters for the IT industry at large. For channel sales businesses in particular, the situation has been testing.
By Jim Holland, GM: Africa at Lenovo Data Center Group
Uncertainty on both the supply and demand sides of their business model has undoubtedly brought unforeseen pressures and made forward-planning a near-impossible task. Despite the difficult circumstances, the channel sector has shown admirable resiliency in continuing to deliver for its customers.
With South Africa currently experiencing its second wave of COVID-19 infections, a more aggressive third wave is expected to flood the nation soon. Therefore, finding new ways to engage with partners and support their ongoing growth through seamless digital experiences is crucial. This is essential for the industry should they wish to harness the sector’s acceleration
The state of channel
Across enterprise sales activities, there has been a deep focus on digitising relationships. Even pre-COVID-19, businesses were beginning to see the value of modernising and streamlining sales interactions through enabling technologies. Now, with social distancing and limited travel the new normal, the industry is naturally moving away from conventional selling interactions towards more agile and scalable ways of managing the sales experience.
For IT businesses like Lenovo, for which channel is integral for our go-to-market strategy and accounts for more than 85% of sales, understanding the current sentiments and evolving needs of channel partners is a business imperative. In fact, this last quarter, we delivered 97% of orders on time, despite the challenges of the pandemic. These were strategic commitments aligned with the high level of priority we give to our channel business. This is especially important for our South African market as 100% of our business goes through the channel.
Our approach has already been validated by the double-digit growth in channel business we’ve seen worldwide this financial year – especially with 1,500 new channel partners going through our certification in the first half of our financial year alone. The channel-first strategy will continue to prove rewarding as we anticipate accelerating growth in areas such as public sector and financial services in the coming months. With this growth already anticipated for Africa, the continent is soon to follow suit in these partnerships and innovations.
On the path to growth
The channel industry is by no means immune to change, and those that are focused on solution-selling and enabling true digital transformation, whilst assisting with seamless integration between vendors and end users stand to reap the rewards. Enterprise interest in technologies such as software-defined infrastructure, artificial intelligence, IoT, edge computing and 5G are still on the cusp of widespread adoption and will have a transformational effect on different aspects of business.
It’s incumbent on us as the vendor to play our role in helping to prepare partners for sales operations and IT consumption models that will help them develop more… to develop more predictable sales models, enhance customer service, improve inventory management and scale to heightened demand. This includes providing better visibility on available product options, dynamic view of pricing, real-time product tracking and progress against performance metrics and rewards.
Innovating for all
Our business is continually looking for ways to harness innovative thinking and technologies that will improve our ability to support our channel partners. We want to support them so they can invest more in business development and enhance their profitability through winning customers. Clearly our approach is proving effective too, evidenced by the number1 ranking we’ve received for channel partner experience, and an average score of 72.1%[1].
This achievement is the result of the time and money we have invested in listening to our channel partners needs and building tools to support them. For instance, a key focus for us has been the SMB market, by ensuring our pricing remains competitive, our solution portfolio remains relevant and there is a dedicated ISR team to support our partners, particularly so at this time.
We also built on our partner offering last year July with the launch of the Partner Hub – a sleek, intuitive and responsive digital platform for partners to get the information, intelligent pricing and support they need to drive their business forward. The platform aims to provide the responsiveness, convenience and predictability channel partners need. Already we’ve seen this reflected in the numbers; we’re able to give instant price quotations to customers from SMB to Enterprise more than 90% of the time, and 95% of the requests we receive for deal registration are turned around in 8 hours.
The Hub reflects our commitment to our “Data-Centered” channel partners and has already seen strong uptake with 36,000 users in its first 10 weeks. We will be continuing to invest in digital platforms and tools, along with value-add rewards that recognise our partners’ know-how, technical competence and specialism in support of Lenovo’s Smarter Technology for All message.
Supporting channel partners’ growth
Our business partners are at the heart of our ecosystem. We are committed for the long term to make doing business with Lenovo a simple, faster and more responsive experience. The current situation we’re all experiencing with the pandemic only cements our commitment and drives us to help more. Our partners’ successes are our own successes.
We’re under no illusions around the difficulties that exist in the current market environment. It’s these situations however, that present immense opportunity to adapt and serve the market better. We’re already seeing it, and we’re helping our partners to capture it. We’re going on the journey with them.
[1] Canalys Candefero Vendor Benchmark 2020