Fighting the Deflationary IT Spiral
I just spent two days at the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) Summit in San Francisco. GTDC brings people together from all the major distributors (Ingram Micro, TechData and Synnex, etc.) along with vendors from IT industry. The buzz coming out of the official sessions and the lobby bar at The Fairmont was the push to higher value relationships between distributors, resellers and vendors. Solution providers who want to grow are developing expertise in delivering services to their customers mainly in the SMB market.
There is a spiral of commoditization on the technology side of the IT market. As suppliers and channel partners, there is a lot to gain by looking into developments that offer more value than has yet been realized – partly because the technologies have not been fully adopted and partly because the value potential has not been fully harvested. Some of the big opportunities revolve around things like VoIP, network storage and document management. We’re starting to deliver assessment services, fleet management, content management, and cost-per-print tools and programs through resellers.
At GTDC, a few things became clear to me:
1. Some successful solution partners are already pursuing value-added services opportunities in document management and would like to get more support from the vendors and distributors to help them. 2. Some distributors (like Synnex) are laying the ground work to ramp up their support dramatically in this area. But, 3. No one has it fully sorted out.
We need to heighten the level of discussion and collaboration. What do you think? And what else should we be doing to make this opportunity more meaningful sooner?
Jim Firestone, President, Xerox North America
Comments
I am delighted Jim Firestone attended the GTDC Summit. The purpose of our group is to unite the leadership of the distribution and vendor communities in order to improve the overall IT supply chain and find ways to help the vendors more effectively reach the market in the U.S. and around the world. As Jim notes, the IT industry has moved beyond moving boxes to selling solutions. There is a need for vendors and distributors to work together to develop this capability. In the chemical industry, for example, chemical distributors have moved beyond selling beakers and chemicals to helping their customers sell and install complete laboratories. There are lots of issues in making this transition – from IT and operational challenges to the simple question of which vendor’s products are recommended for the solution. The GTDC, as an organization representing the largest IT distributors, is interested in working with Xerox and other core IT vendors to move the industry to this next and critical phase.
Posted by: Tim Curran, CEO, Global Technology Distribution Council | September 27, 2006 08:39 AM