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IT solution providers spend much of their time focused on the day-to-day needs of customers. Yet, to thrive in this business, providers must keep an eye on the future by ensuring their business model can anticipate customer needs. This means taking the time to periodically reevaluate skills and competencies and how they map to customer needs. In addition, as technology evolves, providers sometimes have to step out of their comfort zone by adding competencies to help their customers leverage new services and solutions.
IT solution providers that don’t evolve are missing out on additional revenue and risk losing customers who want a provider that supports new offerings. Most channel partners understand this, so in addition to organic growth and acquisitions, IT solution partners should also look to vendors who offer IT partner programs that help them grow and specialize in new areas.
IT partner programs support new offerings
It is hard to keep up with the new skills and offerings that the market is demanding. A robust partner program can help IT solution providers better map their capabilities to customer needs, now and in the future, and acquire skills they lack.
A partner program can also help IT solution providers better compete in their specific local markets and segments. For instance, a partner focused on small-to-medium business solutions can add capabilities to identify, sell, configure, and install edge computing infrastructure, micro data centers, and data center solutions for midsize and enterprise customers.
In addition, IT solution providers traditionally focused on delivering hardware and power management solutions can start leveraging monitoring platforms to gain visibility into and optimize their clients’ networks. Demand for remote management services has increased as customers implement distributed hybrid IT environments combining on-premise, cloud, and edge computing infrastructures. Providers can find vendors that offer programs to support this type of remote management service rather than trying to build it from scratch on their own.
These types of offerings aren’t focused on simply driving volume and revenue but on helping solution providers diversify their business models to better serve existing and new customers.
Market insights
Partner programs can also enable business growth by offering the latest market research to help providers expand their reach and gain a competitive edge with data-driven guidance. Data from each local and vertical market helps partners understand the opportunities, compare their capabilities against those of competitors, and take steps to better meet market requirements. Data sources can even include deal registration databases, training, certification enrollments, and solutions and configurations delivered by providers.
Partnering for success
Most solution providers are already booked with existing business and struggle to master the tactical steps of a new offer. The good news is they can turn to a partner program offering access to sales tools and configurations, pre-sales support, and business development investments in the form of discounts, rebates, and market development funds (MDF). Solution providers can leverage these programs to expand their sales coverage, diversify their business models, and capture new business through market recognition and competitive differentiation.
Explore IT partner program opportunities
The world around IT solution providers keeps evolving, creating greater demand for services and advanced solutions. That’s why Schneider Electric has revamped its partner program. The mySchneider IT partner program has been overhauled to provide the critical support needed to grow competencies, add solution offerings, retain customers, and expand into new markets. It includes access to competitive market research, sales tools, software and services offerings, discounts, and much more for qualifying solution providers. Explore the evolved mySchneider IT Partner Program to see how it can help future-proof your IT solution provider business.
