8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Distributors and vendors need each other to do business in the channel like how a mouse and computer need one another in order to function.

But despite this interdependence the relationship isn't guaranteed to be easy going.

To find out the vendor bugbears of today, CRN spoke with top UK distributors TD SYNNEX, Westcoast, Exertis, Westcon-Comstor and more.

This is the first in a series of articles CRN is publishing exploring channel distribution. Keep an eye out for the rest over the coming weeks.

David Watts, managing director, TD SYNNEX UK&I

"As the interdependency between the vendor and the reseller has become more important, the necessity to plan and be clear about who is doing what within the plan has become so important.

"If I went back ten plus years ago, commonly a vendor would say we need to buy this amount of stock this month, and then we would do our best to sell it within a month and then you go back and buy some more and that's the plan.

"Now, there's a lot more complexity in the planning of what's our job, how our tools need to work, what events are we running, how are we educating their partners for them?

"And then what is their job within that plan, what is ours and then we invest together. I think when that goes right that means we are making decent money as we drive that business.

"Where it's very hard to do that and when it can go wrong, is when the price gets driven down and you're investing in the plan but the return isn't right. That's where it can go wrong. And that probably happens most years with some vendors.

"The necessity to plan when you're trying to drive a channel for whom we feel responsible, and being really clear who's doing what and how you're investing and what the return is can be complicated, but the reward is very high."

From pinching talent to battling with direct sales, continue reading to hear the frustrations of Westcoast, Exertis, Distology and more...

8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Alex Tatham, executive director, Westcoast

"I think that vendors themselves are less prone to change. And I think what's quite interesting is that we often find that they are desperately keen for all sorts of metrics that they often talk about, but what they really care about is the sales number.

"And it's quite interesting to look at that and say, ‘Well, how do we expand our vendor portfolio here because we clearly want to grow ourselves.'

"I often find it frustrating that vendors are overcautious."

8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Tim Griffin, CEO, Exertis UK

"They're our customer. And so we listen to our customers, and we try to create a collaborative environment.

"I have to say our vendors create challenges that they're experiencing for us to go and solve for them.

"So I wouldn't call them frustrations. They are our opportunities to create value and earn from.

"What I have seen is great collaboration of late with our vendors who understand the economic environment and they've come to the table where we can, together create solutions to those problems, and that's been really helpful."

Coming up, Westcon-Comstor and Infinigate UK vent their frustrations...

8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Rakesh Parbhoo, global CTO & SVP MEA, Westcon-Comstor

"For us it's around vendors having the ability and the vision of what automation and integration can do and how it can benefit them.

"It's not just about making us sufficient. I think a number of our vendors absolutely get it and we've seen such amazing success.

"There's still some vendors who maybe don't have the capacity to do that or haven't focused on it. And I think that slows us all down. And so the more they can support us digitally, the more we can do for them.

"And the evolution of that beyond the transaction, I think is the sharing of the data. And obviously it has to be the right data, appropriate data, not confidential data.

"But if they can share more back with us, and we can augment them, then we together can be more successful in providing something to our partners.

"And so data is extremely important for us. The right sources can help us really identify areas of growth both for ourselves, the vendor, and the customers."

8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Justin Griffiths, MD, Infinigate UK

"There's definitely still an open skills shortage. And whether we like it or not distribution can often be a bit of a feeding ground for vendors to take some of our best people.

"That will always continue to be a bit of a challenge but like I said, it's never really going to fix itself.

"We've lost less and less over the years because of what we're building in terms of our own strategy in terms of our own ambitions and expansion across the globe, as well as what we're investing in resources.

"But ultimately, the lure of a vendor was always interesting to the majority.

"Outside of that, I think there's still a challenge where the speed to get things done is indicatively too slow.

"A lot of the larger organisations take a long time for anything to change, whether it's programmatic or technical. But again, these are things that we're fairly used to, but I don't think it's ever really got up to speed where I think today's world realise that agility and speed to market I think often is still too slow."

8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Dave Stevinson, CEO, QBS Software

"The maintenance of their APIs (application programming interface), the quality of their API's, how easy it is to get support on their APIs.

"It's all APIs."

8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Aaron Watts, VP of sales EMEA, Pax8

"One that's probably commonly held across distribution is the age-old challenge of having a direct sales team and an indirect sales motion.

"So then just having direct sales teams that want to be able to work with partners, but then also establishing an indirect motion whereby you're looking at distribution to recruit those partners for you.

"Whilst I fully accept that there is a need and a play for a direct vendor relationship for partners, what I often find is that ideal partner profile, what is the exact type of partner that we want going direct versus what we want to cultivate via the indirect model, that isn't clearly defined.

"So there is a continuous element of us potentially being seen to compete with the vendor directly which is naturally not the anticipation at all.

"Beyond that, I think it's also worth noting that a lot of vendors have gone through an enormous amount of change.

"Over the course of the last couple of years when it comes to dealing with distribution I see the number of vendors that are looking to work with Pax8 being more and more tech savvy.

"What I mean by that is around using technology to allow their systems to be able to speak to our ecosystem to be able to provide digital delivery that is seamless, and frictionless."

8 distribution leaders reveal their top vendor frustrations

From poaching talent to direct sales challenges, which vendor traits do some of the UK’s leading distributors find most frustrating?

Lance Williams, chief product officer, Distology

"I have very few frustrations. What I have is, we developed an approach at Distology, which really helps vendors to think about the right things before they jump in to be in any type of channel engagement, specifically with introducing a distributor.

"And if you were to look at it in a different way, I suppose if we weren't doing these things, then I might see it being frustrating.

"But I would be feeling frustrated, because I'm not actually helping the vendor rather than being frustrated because what they're doing is the wrong thing.

"I think any vendor that is looking to enter a market or grow in a market that doesn't have a business development fund that is already allocated in their budgets is dreaming, because you don't get to do stuff for free.

"There is a very small percentage of vendors that I talked to that turn up expecting distribution to be some side kind of magic that costs them absolutely nothing to do all of this work. And they sometimes get surprised when they get rebuffed on that."