VARTrends are educational events (both live and virtual) where channels can meet other VARs and MSPs as well as independent developers, to learn and evaluate the tools and services on offer to support the move to SaaS and other changes.
On September 8-9 in Milton Keynes, some of industry’s heavyweights are coming together at the first VARTrends conference to help VARs and MSPs to make this important business transformation. Successful VARs and MSPs will find new things to help them accelerate faster. Other VARs and MSPs who are at the early stages of the transition will find everything they need in one spot.
“The VARTrends event is a key component of our global mission to help the channel to become bigger, better and stronger. The conference is at least 80% educational with minimal vendor sponsorships. The high interactivity between the delegates at this event is the key component. This is not a “preaching” event. It is an exchange of important ideas, information and skills. We want to deliver the best content that will move the needle up on VARs and MSPs”, says Julian Lee, President of TechnoPlanet [the twenty-five year old channel organization that helped to build the resource].
VARTrends has partnered with local organizations in the UK like Transmentum to make this conference a bigger success. Transmentum came from the MSP World and have since produced some of the best business coaches in the UK channel. It has helped many MSPs to successfully make the transition, it says, adding that other partners are continuing to join the mission to bring more value from different perspectives including a recent start-up called TotallyMSP with MSP experts Chris Tate and Richard Tubb.
The first topic of the conference will set the stage for VARs and MSPs by helping them to better understand the next generation channel and what is needed to remain relevant. Adam Harris and Paul Fileman from Transmentum; Carl West from GFK and Alex Tatham from Westcoast will be on the panel discussion that will be hosted by Julian Lee. “These leaders come from the MSP, distributor, research and channel marketing sectors. Combined, these stakeholders bring very deep insights from all corners of the channel,” says Lee.
Other experts on hand will include Alan Norman from IT Europa providing insight into the European MSP and channel landscape, content specialists from CompTIA offering channel support and research data and channel marketing experts from The IT Marketing Agency and 650Hours providing answers to questions on marketing.
Among the key business topics to be covered:
- Is your company ready to be part of the channel 2.0?
- Top 10 secrets of the most successful VARs and MSPs.
- The road to recurring revenue
- How to build a winning digital strategy
- Project implementation strategy
- Building and running an effective sales process
- How to build a winning business strategy and vision
- Winning the battle of the scarce human resources
- How to build a recurring-revenue with Cloud
At a breakout sessions called the Transmentum Taster, delegates are put into smaller groups where they get an opportunity to discuss their actual business challenges. The group will select and focus on solving one problem.
Adam Harris, Director of Transition, Transmentum commented, “The taster experience will help these business owners to share some of their problems in an intimate group and experience how the power of a peer group can help them to overcome challenges. Our coaches will be on-hand to guide them through the process”.
One of the highlights of the event is the highly awarded motivational speaker Nigel Risner who will be delivering an inspirational three-hour session to help the delegates to break through their comfort zone and take steps that they never thought possible.
StorageCraft is among the vendors invited to participate in the event; it will be showing how VARs and MSPs can build a recurring revenue business practice using a Backup, Disaster and Recovery Cloud solution. There will be several other opportunities to help VARs and MSPs build recurring revenues including NOC providers. NOC is an emerging service that could fast-track more VARs into becoming MSPs by private-label outsourcing the service help desk portion of the business.
Julian Lee adds, “This event is actually for the entire channel including vendors and distributors because they can also leverage this powerful resource to help them grow the business of their channel partners and possibly use a few of the tools and services for their company. At some point, it is time to think past the sales pitches towards really supporting the partners to actually fix and grow their businesses. This will open the real bottleneck and sales will flow faster.”
Over the two-day VARTrends event delegates will have ample opportunities to network over breakfast, lunches, dinner and receptions. The event is aiming to attract companies who are clearly committed to transitioning their company into a recurring revenue business model. If you do qualify, there is no cost for you to attend the event except if you will require overnight hotel accommodations. For more information visit here. The complete 40-page conference guide is also available for download.