Channel Awards 2024 Q&A: GoTo, head of partner sales - EMEA

Robinder Koura says unstable and transitional political situations, alongside partners feeling compelled to develop AI strategies have proven challenging this year

Shortlisted for Vendor Channel Team of the Year at the 2024 CRN Channel Awards, GoTo is gearing up for the ‘Oscars’ of the channel.

Speaking to CRN about the significance of the awards, GoTo o head of partner sales – EMEA, Robinder Koura mulls the company’s proudest achievement from this year.

Why do you think awards like the Channel Awards matter? What would winning this award mean to your company?

I think in our professional lives, besides monetary compensation, most would agree that we all covet receiving recognition – especially from peers or your industry as a whole - for the work we do.

Awards are a major source of motivation and pride. Winning this award from what is generally recognised as the industry’s most prestigious channel organisation would be a tremendous honour for us here at GoTo, highlighting how important our channel partners are to us here in EMEA.

On a personal level, I would love for our team to be recognised for the incredible dedication and hard work they have exhibited day in/day out over the last year to build an exceptional GoTo partner program and ecosystem in EMEA.

What would you say is your company’s proudest achievement over the past year?

Maybe I’m biased because I lead GoTo’s EMEA channel partner team, but I have to say having our team being shortlisted for this award is right up there in terms of proudest achievements this year! I would also say our re-building and growing our DACH region business, utilising a partner first approach, has also been a big source of pride for our EMEA team.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2024 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

The continued weak macro-economic and unstable and transitional political situations, particularly here in EMEA, have definitely been a challenge for our partners and us vendors, affecting historically normal trends in end customer buying behaviour.

Buying behaviour has also been affected by end customers and partners feeling compelled to develop strategies and initiatives around AI in all their technology purchasing and planning.

At GoTo, we have overcome these challenges by working over the last couple of years to diversify both geographically and solution-wise to not necessarily rely on historical customer buying trends.

In addition, GoTo had already been developing our offerings and strategy around AI and training our salespeople accordingly in preparation for this type of interaction with partners and customers.

How do you think the channel has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

The last year has continued to show that the channel is still in a period of change, disruption and evolution with significant mergers and acquisitions in both the vendor and partner space.

And there still are many vendors and partners grappling with the huge shift from hardware centric to software/SaaS centric, particularly in distribution.

Add in the massive growth and needs around AI, cybersecurity and support for hybrid work environments, and it is clear the channel ecosystem needs to evolve and change rapidly to address these technology trends.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the channel in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

Most in the industry would agree that we are in the midst of the most significant changes in technology potentially ever with the shift to hybrid work environments and the growth of AI.

These changes present a huge opportunity, and in GoTo’s case, we feel we are well positioned to support our partners with solutions that help address these trends and the demands of their customers in these areas.

GoTo (previously known as LogMeIn) has been a pioneer in IT remote support – a key requirement for organisations needing to support a remote and hybrid workforce.

We have also invested heavily in incorporating what I would call “practical AI” into our products – AI that delivers clear, measurable outcomes.

For example, for our support products, we use the concept of “virtual assistants” to aid IT departments to better resolve IT related issues faster and more efficiently.

We have also enhanced our Customer Experience (CX) solutions with AI in the areas of sentiment analysis and natural language processing to optimise and improve customer interactions. And all of solutions are architected with a “security first” ethos, via a zero trust and ISO compliant cyber security approach, which we consider a competitive differentiator.