Johannesburg, 15 Dec 2021
Who is responsible for acquiring new business in your company? Who takes care of customers after they have purchased goods or services from you? Even though customers make up the core of every organisation, astoundingly few businesses offer some form of integrated customer experience.
Most technology channel companies still operate with a transactional approach: Sell big and earn big. Yet, while effective, it has its limits. It's much harder to generate recurring revenue when customers spend a lot of capex upfront and delay new purchases or upgrades as they focus on a return on investment. Follow-up transactional purchases often become grudge purchases.
Customers today want more. They want steady and predictable costs. They want to stay in step with technology without enduring hefty upgrade fees. Above all, they want partners who understand their businesses and can help them with their strategic purchasing choices.
Service-orientated business models are the answer to those requirements, while simultaneously incorporating transactional elements. For most channel companies, particularly SMEs, it's not a question of whether to adopt such a business model, but rather how. At Axiz, we have been making the same adaptations, expanding how our business operates while adding powerful software capabilities such as the Axiz Business Platform to help us and our partners deliver more to the market.
Part of our journey is to help our partners understand the benefits of a service-centric model and how they can adapt to it. In the past few months, we released a series of ongoing articles to unpack the different elements and answer prudent questions about the change. Here, we round up the first eight in the series:
Amplifying product value with services
Moving away from a purely transactional business model doesn't mean you should abandon your hardware or license sales. But you can generate much more business and enjoy consistent revenue streams with service-centric offerings. At Axiz, we bring the two worlds together on our Business Platform.
Inclusion: The new channel model
Competing in the B2B market can be very challenging – especially if you are an SME. Often deals exclude companies, and it's challenging to be competitive if you stand on your own. But if you work through a platform ecosystem, you can access resources, partner with different providers on complex projects, and scale as you need to with much less risk.
Punching above your weight in the channel
Linear business models do not help smaller channel providers as much as large organisations with many different offerings. Except for growing into larger enterprises, do SME providers have any chance to punch above their weight? In a linear market, no. But in a networked market, things change considerably.
Supporting the small guy – the SME in the channel
Numerous studies show that digital technologies significantly reduce service acquisition costs for customers. This change means that SME providers can compete against bigger rivals. But they still must overcome numerous barriers, such as better access to funds and business development catalysts. How does Axiz help SME partners address such issues?
How do you find your business' place in the managed services world?
Many companies no longer wish to own every bit of technology service they use. Instead, they prefer to access these as services and pay for them using an opex budget approach. Managed services is a popular example of this market opportunity. But what is it, and how can you make them part of your offering to customers?
Skills and capital: How Axiz supports the rise of the channel SME
SMEs are the backbone of growing economies. To support that growth, public and private sector enterprises look to spend more with SME providers. But the transition can be dangerous for a small business. If your revenue suddenly doubles or triples, are you prepared, and does your company have the skill to maintain the new demand? Learn how we evolved Axiz to help SMEs change their practices to take on bigger contracts.
Take the customer on your digital transformation journey
The crux of the shift from pure transactional models to service-based ones is that channel businesses should digitally transform. But if you are an established business with existing clients, that is a much bigger ask than it may seem. How do you change and still maintain what you've taken years to build? The answer: Bring your customers with you.
The Axiz Cloud Platform – enabling the channel
We may be talking a lot about the channel's need to transform, but at Axiz, we're acting as well. Complementing our leading distribution business, we are also a cloud services provider and aggregator of business opportunities for our many partners. How do we do it? Introducing the Axiz Cloud Platform – the networking hub where we can do many things for our partners, and our partners can bring everything technology to their customers.
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