The most valuable thing you’ll read this week
When you stop to think about it – like I have, just this minute – value is a strangely ambivalent word. I accept it’s a weird time to stop and think about it, especially when I’ve been blithely using the word for years and years, but the context here is provided by some remarks from Steve Brazier, CEO at Canalys, at Canalys Forum EMEA. I’ll get to those remarks later, but first I must return to the subject of value.
For many people, value is synonymous with a good deal. They might say something was ‘good value’ or ‘value for money’. Usually, what they mean was that they bought something for a good price. Often that could mean it was cheaper. For example, you might say the jumper you bought from Shop X was ‘good value’ compared to an equivalent item from Shop Y. Or a meal at one restaurant was ‘good value’ compared to a similar dinner somewhere else.
In the context of the IT industry, however, value has a different meaning. When we talk about channel partners that ‘add value’, the underlying assumption is that we’re talking about something more than price. It’s frequently about service and support, added extras that make the transaction worth more to the customer and command a higher price.
You could argue that there’s something similar at a restaurant where the service and ambience add value, but people don’t normally see it in those terms. Instead they might say “the service was fantastic, the ambience was lovely and the food and drink were good value”. It’s still associated more often with price or cost.
In the IT industry, the approach is different. The assumption is that most people can supply the customer with product ‘X’ and the value is in the things that the channel partner can wrap around that.
Logically, that should mean partners that add value are prized by customers and vendors alike, even if there are always going to be some that view ‘value’ purely in cost terms.
Which brings us to Brazier. His remarks don’t fall neatly into either of the definitions of value I have set out so far but focus, instead, on the value of partners to vendors and customers.
“We are a strong, powerful industry in our own right,” he said, adding: “The tech partner landscape is a significant industry in its own right, with major companies, multibillion-dollar companies, and the balance has shifted a bit because there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of technology vendors out there trying to find partners.”
The value provided by the partner community to the IT ecosystem can be measured crudely in terms of revenue. But it is also evident in the powerful presence channel businesses have in the IT sector. As Brazier noted, there are lots of vendors trying to find partners and that’s because they understand the value of those partners to the possible success of their business. Put simply, if the partner landscape did not provide value, it would not exist.
The more successful the partner landscape becomes, the more value it gains in the eyes of vendors and customers because it makes it clear that partners play a valuable role for both.
And this goes beyond value by price or the value partners add to the customer to something more fundamental, the value of the partners themselves. They are the value that is added to the engagement between vendor and customer. That’s where the real ‘value’ is.
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