The Covid-19 pandemic and the July riots and looting have resulted in stock shortages and logistical issues which have been a massive frustration for the channel in South Africa.
By Dorio Bowes, commercial director of Westcon Southern Africa
For instance, lockdown conditions have greatly limited the number of airline carriers that distributors can use to get stock into the country. Furthermore, there has been production delays on certain products. In this instance, manufacturing in certain countries has been limited because they have to meet their own critical requirements and Covid restrictions. This has negatively impacted mass production across the whole of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
In Johannesburg, we could find alternative solutions, but the challenges in KwaZulu-Natal were significant. Closer to home, the recent looting also took its toll and affected our delivery to resellers and end user customers, especially in KwaZulu-Natal. But once the looting and unrest stopped, it was back to business as usual.
Despite the challenges, there remain opportunities. Yes, there have been setbacks like the pandemic, looting and even ransomware, but within those comes the potential to rebuild infrastructure and tackle the cybersecurity threat. The channel must embrace this and use these obstacles as platforms for future growth.
The events of the past 17 months have highlighted how no country or territory within the channel faces the same challenges. In South Africa, we have our own struggles and economic crises. Nobody knows how long recovery will take, it could be six months or five years, and the only certainty is that it will come. Fortunately, the demand to rebuild infrastructure is there with people keen on getting back to a sense of normality as fast as possible. Both the government and private sectors are doing everything to get business back up and running.
Westcon-Comstor has taken a strategic approach in line with its resellers to understand their immediate needs. We have followed this up with a programmatic approach to rebuild the effectiveness of the channel, whether that is being operationally ready or offering support from a finance credit perspective. Internally, we launched “Westcon-Comstor Cares” to help staff affected by the looting. Our employees in Johannesburg put food parcels and essential goods together which we loaded on a truck to deliver to our team in KwaZulu-Natal. We ensured that we looked after every staff member in all affected areas during those difficult few weeks.
The narrative around the channel environment has changed. Things like solutions, independent software vendors, cross-selling, and up-selling matter more than ever. Security as a service has become a big selling point, but so has the uplifting of solutions in their entirety. To this end, we speak to better solution lifecycle management.
The hybrid cloud has become a game-changer in the sector while work from home solutions continuously evolve to meet demand. Yes, challenges remain. But the channel can see it as invaluable learnings to take the industry to the next level in a digitally-driven world.