'This is now the central place for partners to interact with us': Westcon-Comstor launches first marketplace
Westcon CTO Rakesh Parbhoo talks us through the new PartnerCentral marketplace and partner needs
Distributor Westcon-Comstor has released its first multivendor marketplace, PartnerCentral, where partners will be able to configure, quote, and order complex hybrid solutions with billing for software, hardware, services.
Just nine months after Westcon CEO David Grant spoke to CRN about trialling the marketplace, PartnerCentral is now available to markets across the world and aims to give partners an easier way to transact, access business and customer insights, which it claims will capitalise on new opportunities and market trends.
Westcon says the marketplace is designed to "accelerate and simplify" the move to cloud with and "as-a-service" payment models.
"This marketplace is the central place for partners to interact with us. We used to have multiple tools available for partners but different ways to get there, and different ways to log in," said Rakesh Parbhoo CTO of Westcon-Comstor speaking to CRN.
"So the core is about bringing all of this together: all the things that we offer to our partners in one place.
"We want to make it as simple as possible for partners to transact with us. We've leveraged the work we've been doing around vendor integrations for the last few years.
"And we're surfacing that capability for our partners, so they get to benefit from the automation capabilities we have built out internally."
He reveals that Westcon has invested "millions of dollars" to develop this marketplace and how it's a journey that will continuously be enhanced.
The benefits - data is king
Parbhoo explained that PartnerCentral allows a partner to combine traditional hardware, perpetual software licenses, services and subscriptions into one place in a hybrid transaction - which is one of the key benefits of the new marketplace.
Another key element is the data insights that Westcon shares with partners through their marketplace, through a feature called Partner Insights.
"I think sharing that level of data and information with partners is quite unique.
"We do it because we want the partners to have the ability to spot new opportunities and manage renewals in advance, because if you're going to grow your business in a B2B world, you need to do that proactively.
"So, driving those capabilities is what we see as a differentiator."
Simplifying procurement and management of recurring subscriptions was also one of the aims set out by this new partner marketplace, he said.
"What PartnerCentral delivers is full transparency. It's easy to see what subscriptions and opportunities are coming up for review. A partner can manage a subscription by suspending it, adding additional seats or reducing as needed based on the type of offering the vendor has."
Responding to the wider move to subscription models
This issue was emphasised by recent research conducted by Westcon, which revealed a growing shift towards subscription and recurring revenue models in the industry.
"This is a journey that end customers have been on for some time, shifting the way they purchase technologies," Parbhoo commented.
"Most of them have some sort of a hybrid cloud model where they will have certain things in their environments on-premise and other workloads in the cloud. They are shifting from just one-off outlays to wanting to have their technology costs in line with their revenue income."
"So it's distributors who have to make sure that we're adapting to those changing demands from the end customer side and the changing business model from the vendor side in order to support out partners"
However, this shift in business models does come with challenges, Parbhoo conceded.
According to research conducted by the distributor, 78 per cent of respondents highlighted that they are only part way through this journey migrating to subscriptions and services and face a variety of challenges in realising full migration. And 52 per cent cited the need to manage a complex multi-vendor portfolio as the biggest challenge they face.
Finally, 60 per cent said they believe that a single platform to buy hardware and software will help accelerate this shift.
Parbhoo believes that's where a distributor marketplace can step in to play a role in alleviating these challenges.
"The benefit of PartnerCentral is that it allows the partners to get what they need at their fingertips and at the most basic level, it frees them and our people up to have more meaningful conversations, the more complex discussions, rather than dealing with the routine tasks.
"And on top of that, this is not just about the transactions.
"We have learning content. We have both soft skills and technical training that partners can access. We've got a lot of rich educational material around helping them with their business and marketing services capability.
"And the feedback we've had from a lot of partners in trial has been extremely positive. This is really providing business benefits over and above the things you'd expect around the transactional capabilities."
He added: " While the transactional benefits will significantly improve a partner's day-to-day challenges - the insights that PartnerCentral brings will deliver so much more.
It's the access to robust reporting and insights (through Partner Insights) which allow partners to track their engagements with customers and surface wider industry trends that can help identify opportunities for growth. In short, PartnerCentral is a gateway to Partner Success."