Lab-based approach
Services can also include demonstration labs that resellers can use to show their customers the technology in a live environment or assisting in Proof of Concepts and designing direct marketing campaigns into their customer databases. “The list goes on,” O’Hara states. “The benefits of FSD to a reseller might best be summarised as the distributor identifying the skills and weaknesses of the reseller around a vendor it distributes”. The FSD’s job is to provide “a full service that complements the reseller’s skills and works to eliminate as many of the weaknesses as possible”. This would also ensure the vendor’s interests and opportunities were best aligned with the reseller’s prospects.
Conway makes the point often cited by VADs in the past that they are effectively the vendor for many of the brands they distribute. “We do a lot of education and calls, we work with reseller account managers to go to their users. We’re not necessarily just focused on one solution, we’re going in as a trusted partner (from a security point of view in our case), looking at what they’re trying to achieve and what might be appropriate or not appropriate. And if we can’t fulfil the need, we say we can’t do it, you need to talk to somebody else.”
O’Hara agrees: “To me, a distributor is an extension of, or an addition to, the service offered by the vendor. The ultimate goal is to maximise the business opportunity and revenues for the vendor the distributor is representing.”
“Most of the value – on top of the choice, availability and credit – that we add is in the pre-sales stage, helping partners to identify the right products for their customers and to present and demonstrate those solutions to the customer” – Michael Jackson, Tech Data
He argues a FSD can add value by least complementing and enhancing the reseller’s go-to-market strategy. “This should lead to increased sales and services for resellers and help maintain strong reseller relationships with their customers,” he says. “The customer should get a better service from a well-informed reseller partner at the best pricing for the technology that best meets their needs.”
While those remarks concern FSDs in this context, they could equally apply to logistics type operations because the definition of what that better service requirement is bound to vary from product to product. Just as there was a wide discrepancy over what constituted value when it came to distributors that defined themselves as value added, so there is likely to be some divergence over just how ‘full’ full service distribution needs to be.
In some cases, full service is nothing more than logistics. That’s why there’s a full in fulfilment. In the end, it’s about providing the right level of service for a particular product or vendor to resellers so they can ensure they give their customers the appropriate technology for their needs in the most effective way for everyone. That’s where the value is and that’s what full service is.
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