Not In Services? Not In Business

Tomorrow’s technology routes to market are defined by the shift from resell to services. A change that’s been happening for many years. IoT is a part of that and will accelerate the change.

You’re already in the services business. If you’re a B2B technology vendor, you’re in the services business. Or to put it another way, if you’re not in the services business, then you’re not in business.

That statement is going to impact how you develop and deliver your solutions, and it’s going to impact how you market and sell them. That change started a long time ago, not just with IoT.

If you’re a software vendor then chances are you’re already well down this route. Certainly in terms of how you develop and deliver your solutions. If you’re a hardware vendor then you might be earlier in that journey.

In terms of routes to market, and the way that we sell our solutions, we have to recognise the huge impact that this is going to have-- that this is having. The services route to market has already eclipsed the resell route to market. IoT is going to hasten that change.

What this means is that you’re going to need to carve out your resell partner program, and create a complete route to market model to engage service partners. That model is going to reward channel partners based on their commitment to you as a vendor, not in revenue terms, but in terms of their investment in skills, co-selling and customer influence. And you’re going to need to find ways to measure those things.

There’s a good argument to say that partner levelling will become redundant, as it doesn’t have the relevance to service routes to market that it does in resell.

Much more important in application and services routes to market are app marketplaces, vertical segmentation, pay by usage, partner to partner relationships, customer feedback. When you think of your partner engagement model and your partner program of the future you might want to look a little less at the legacy tiering models, and a little more at the Apple App store. Or Salesforce App Exchange. Or Google Play.

The content in this opinion piece is an extract from ‘The Impact of IoT on Technology Routes to Market’, a keynote presentation by Matt Rowland-Jones of bChannels. To read more visit Matt’s webpage here.

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