How distribution can deliver valuable customer data insights

Across the IT channel, partners are starting to pivot from a transaction-driven sales model to one that’s built around the value they can provide across the customer lifecycle.

Today’s partners increasingly recognize the impact they can have on the buyer journey, from creating market demand for particular products, to assisting in the discovery process, and through to ongoing education and services that occur post-purchase. Moreover, they need to recognize new opportunities before their customers even ask.

Patrick Aronson

Patrick Aronson is responsible for Westcon-Comstor’s business performance across south-east Asia, Greater China, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand and also serves as the company’s chief marketing officer. Prior to joining Westcon-Comstor, Patrick spent a decade leading Motorola's mobile business in south-east Asia. He also spent five years as managing director at Brightstar where he developed its engagement strategy and mobility business. 

These changes are occurring because the way organizations buy products and services has shifted. Their typical buying journey has become more digital, more referral-based, and less sales-focused. Crucially, partners are engaging prospects long before an organization comes into direct contact with a prospect and long after the point of sale. 

As such, technology vendors are overhauling their partner programmes to reflect this shift, with many now rewarding partners who influence customers outside the point of sale, for example.

Access to data presents the biggest challenge for partners

Against this backdrop, partners are continuing to move towards subscription and recurring revenue models. Within this model, customer success and understanding how to deliver long-term value to customers is key. 

Having the right data is critical.

Many partners have to date been operating in traditional ‘pay-per-product’ models and are now looking to transition their legacy customers to subscriptions and recurring offers. As such, they need a deep understanding of how to balance the shift and how to get the most from the new model. It requires both transactional data and data insights that help them grow their customer base and add more value over the duration of the customer lifecycle.

However, according to Westcon-Comstor’s channel research report, navigating the shift: The role of distributor marketplaces in partner success, 40% of partners said access to the right data to support the customer lifecycle was their main challenge as they shift to subscriptions and recurring revenue models.

When asked what operational requirements partners have to move to these new models, most partners say they need an understanding of how the market is changing (52%), and data on customer lifecycle and renewal dates (45%).

Distributor marketplaces deliver the right data

This is where distribution has a pivotal role to play. Most distributors are already expanding their subscription offerings and working with partners and vendors to enable the shift to subscription and services. 

As intermediaries in the supply chain, this community is in a unique position to share data and insights with partners that will help them better manage their multivendor portfolios and the complexities that come with transformation.

Ultimately, the right data insights can be key to keeping end customers happy, help with upsell and cross-sells, and reduce the risk of churn. But delivering this data in a format that’s accessible, understandable, and provides actionable insight is challenging. This is where partners are looking to distributor marketplaces to deliver the right data and enablement services to partners.

Indeed, when partners were asked how distributors could help with customer success, most (55%) said access to more customer data was most important. 39% percent also want access to market data from distribution.

Where this gets interesting for partners is understanding how their customers are getting the business benefit from their services, how they are using it, and whether they are getting the most out of it. 

Online distribution marketplaces give them the data they need to understand what they have delivered to their clients to help them identify new solutions for their customers so that both the partner and the end customer gets the most out of the services they’re offering.

Marketplaces put partners firmly in the driver’s seat by giving them a single platform to buy and manage hardware, software and services in one place, plus the ability to track customer trends and challenges that can lead to new opportunities.

Ultimately, partners need data to improve customer experience, gain insights for better decision making, build pipelines for new products and services based on customer trends, and more. 

Traditionally, distributor marketplaces have not stood up to this challenge. The future of distribution marks marketplaces as enablers of partner growth through meaningful customer and market data insights. And we’re sitting firmly on the edge of the future.