Many mid-market channel organisations are feeling the pinch as tougher corporate governance regulations bite into the financial resources of small and medium business (SMBs), which find themselves suddenly having to spend money on setting up processes and procedures they hadn`t budgeted for and, in theory, don`t have money for information technology.
In fact, the situation is one of the best opportunities to come along in many years for resellers to rapidly grow their own revenues. As customers look for ways to increase transparency across the value chain, they`re being forced to recognise that information and communications technology (ICT) is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways of accessing, aggregating and reporting on their business information.
They`re also realising that the automation and integration they can get only from ICT are going to make them more productive and competitive - and therefore more profitable. ICT therefore offers them a double whammy: legitimacy and profit in one fell swoop.
Which means that competition in the channel is going to be fierce. But that`s not the opportunity I`m talking about. Because the question is: how to differentiate yourself as a reseller from among all the others that will be touting their solutions as THE answer to customers` governance nightmares?
For once, the answer is quite simple: Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) verification. ITIL is a set of pre-written strategies and procedures for running a corporate information technology (IT) function. It covers aspects from development, through system delivery, availability and maintenance, all the way to support of the system through help-desk and other services. It consists of a set of reference books written by acknowledged industry experts, commentators, practitioners and theorists.
What does that have to do with you as a member of the mid-market channel? In order to achieve the levels of control and reporting required, your customers not only need modern, relevant IT systems, they also need to manage them as effectively as possible - and ITIL provides a simple and straightforward way of streamlining IT processes. And this is where the real opportunity lies - for you to interact at a more strategic level with your customers.
Instead of restricting yourself to a pure technology approach and, therefore, the fairly small margins on point solutions or enduring the pressure of the continuous chase for volume sales, you can use ITIL to add consultancy and service provision to your revenue stream. Much more lucrative. And guaranteed to put you in a longer-term relationship with your customers that is going to give you a much steadier income.
Using the best practices inherent in ITIL, you can help your customers clearly and precisely evaluate and document business processes - establishing where they are today and where they need to get in order to achieve their business vision.
Sound difficult? Not really. Like most best practice, it`s common sense. The starting point is identifying or creating appropriate functional workflows that enable the organisation to function seamlessly and senior management to see and control the whole business more effectively. Once you have a process map, you can overlay relevant technologies.
The purpose is to create a series of interdependencies, by building an IT architecture which seamlessly `glues` all the business processes together in order to link customers, suppliers and infrastructure with all levels of the business - senior management, middle management and operational staff.
Do I hear you saying that you`re not trained to be a consultant and that you don`t want that sort of responsibility anyway? Well, mapping technology to processes is part of what you have to do, even in a point solution. So you`re part of the way there already. And if you don`t broaden your scope, you risk being left behind. Businesses generally, even SMBs, are twigging to the fact that integration is key to their profitability, never mind key to keeping their CEOs on the right side of corporate governance regulations.
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