He points to the example of Thunderbolt, Intel’s high-bandwidth connector, which is “invaluable” for HP’s media customers working in 1080p and 4k “but I have far more customers who still buy our ProBook 650 G1 notebook with an RS232 port (aka the serial port) because that’s what their HVAC, assembly line or industrial machinery use for diagnostics or monitoring and changing those costs millions”.
So how can vendors and channel partners make sure they are doing what is best for their customers rather than what’s best for the technology they sell?
“The skills and core knowledge required to do a job are still required, regardless of the benefits of technology” – Colm Warner, CWSI
“The best approach is to understand their customer,” Trevaskis suggests. They should understand their customers’ business and the challenges they face so they can “provide the right product to address those challenges. Dell and our partners work with customers to fully understand their business and ensure we are providing a product to address those needs and not simply the product that happens to be on our list of things to sell this week. By fully understanding the needs of the customer, we remove the pitfall of over-selling a solution”.
Relevance
Cranks says meeting customers and seeing how they use technology is the best way to stay relevant to them. “I discovered very quickly on entering this industry that my assumptions about what any other industry involves were very wrong,” he acknowledges, “and that any lessons from customer A do not necessarily carry over to customer B, even within the same industry. We at HP are very proud of the reach and scope of our partners that provides a local resource for our customers to call on when required.”
Moore at E-mit Solutions believes partners have a pivotal role to play. He has witnessed a number of projects fail because the technology partners “did not have an in-depth knowledge of the client’s business”. Sometimes, they forced off-the-shelf packages onto clients which meant they had to completely change the way they worked because there was no bespoke configuration.
“IT should enhance the way you do business but it shouldn’t fundamentally change the way you do business,” Moore concludes. “No IT provider knows your business better than you. IT partners should always adopt a ‘business first’ approach to these projects.”
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