The role of the channel needs to change and the role of distributors needs to change with it – that’s the view of Mark McHale, VP North-West Europe, Arrow ECS who presented at this week’s Arrow Vision 2019 event at London’s Olympia. “We believe we're in a time of huge change. Change will transform the market and the channel that sells it for many years to come," he says.
McHale sees two main drivers behind a fundamental shift in the marketplace. Firstly: “the pace of change “Is faster than it ever has been before. And that's because technology is evolving much faster than it ever has done before.” And secondly the nature of the opportunity is changing: “Data is something that we used to store. Now it is a valuable asset to companies” and that he believes is fundamentally changing the nature of the requirement and what customers are looking for from an IT supplier.
Companies are striving to achieve more profitable growth and they are looking for technology and IT in particular to deliver that. For them the key question is: “How do I achieve more profitable growth, through business insights that I can gain from my data to give me efficiency gains, process change and business model change, do something different that I don't do today - Change the way I'm working? And when you add the fact that they want to do this faster and more efficiently than their competitors, that's the gauntlet that the end users have laid down for this community.”
McHale believes that "data-driven businesses are probably going to lead the way of the future. They will be the leading businesses moving forward……because they're the companies that are going to gain insights from the data they have and use it to change their business models.” He also believes that helping customers harness and manage this data represents a great opportunity for the channel, but that it develop new skills and new partnerships to manage the increasing complexity that will go with this: “one company won't be able to deliver everything that the company needs to achieve for that solution for the customer. So you need to go and look for partnerships, collaboration with others, possibly even partner with somebody that you compete with today.” This he believes is as true for vendors as it is for channel organisations.
He sees Channel organisations as pivotal in delivering all the disparate technologies customers will require and to support this evolving role; the role of distributors also need to change: “distribution needs to be an aggregator of technology with tools and services that helps develop the channel.”
