Context: Resellers value relationship with distribution

Resellers continue to be appreciative of the support and wide range of services that distribution provides, according to research canvassing the opinions of the channel across Europe.

The key findings from Context’s latest ChannelWatch survey continue to be released in stages, with the market watcher last week revealing that there continues to be optimism among partners, despite the current economic headwinds.

This time around, the focus is on the relationship between reseller and distributor, with the former indicating that they are satisfied with the range of services on offer, including billing, pre-sales, product availability, customer portals, supply chain and configuration services, and financial and field support.

The only areas where there was a hint that more work could be done was around “lead generation to help secure new customers”, where the scores have failed to increase over the past three years.

Distribution has been vocal about its determination to invest in support and services, with many ploughing investment into developing their own cloud marketplaces over the past couple of years.

Adam Simon, global managing director at Context, said the effort by distribution to improve their offer for resellers was ongoing.

“We know that many distributors are currently investing in how to help their resellers in this area – for example, through more intelligent use of data to identify new opportunities,” he said. “It’s clearly an area where resellers look to them for help and feel they could do better.”

Context has been tracking the relationship between different tiers of the channel for a while and the 2022 results are not out of character.

“However, overall there has been remarkable stability in these high scores over recent years, so congratulations are in order to the distributor community,” said Simon.

But distribution has not just been working on its reseller relationships, and consistent research from the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) has shown that it has also been making strides to underline the benefits it can offer vendors.

Speaking at the organisation’s event this summer, GTDC CEO Frank Vitagliano restated his view that the key to success for vendors was to work ever more closely with disties to ensure they were getting the most out their partnerships.

“IT distributors are readily helping companies around the world endure economic and environmental challenges, and actively developing programmes and resources that fuel the solutions of tomorrow,” Vitagliano said back in June.

Last week, Context shared the feelings across the industry about the future and found that 62% of those channel partners it quizzed were expecting their business to perform better over the coming 12 months, while just over a quarter (27%) were anticipating no change and only 10% were bracing for things to get worse.