Westcon-Comstor uses data to generate additional partner business

When Westcon-Comstor first unveiled its plans to share data with partners to drive their growth, the distributor outlined the benefits that would deliver, with talk of uncovering opportunities, tracking customer trends and making sure partners were able to capitalise. The distributor has now shared the progress made by sharing data and demonstrated those words have been turned into a reality.

Westcon-Comstor has revealed its Intelligent Demand (ID) programme, which uses data to uncover growth opportunities for partners, generated $768m in additional revenue for partners in FY24 , up 70% on 2023’s figure of $450m.

Those end-user leads were generated during the firm's fiscal year, ended 29 February, using predictive analytics to identify growth and ensure partners can support customers over the lifetime of an investment.

Over the course of the fiscal year Westcon-Comstor completed 532 Intelligent Demand analyses for partners across 28 countries spanning Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC). As things stand, there are now 2,000 registered users of the system across the firm’s global partner base.

“Data is the lifeblood of our partners’ success,” said Atul Damani, chief data officer at Westcon-Comstor. “As a business, we recognise that empowering our partners with actionable insights is crucial for their success.”

“That’s why we’re committed to providing a comprehensive, market-leading data offering, enabling partners to make informed decisions, identify growth opportunities and accelerate sales. Intelligent Demand is a crucial element of our data-driven approach and we’re pleased to report that it has generated net new revenue for our partners and vendors,” he added. 

The distributor has been focusing on using data, and back in March cut the ribbon on its Partner Insights offering to provide the channel with more metrics to chart their progress and performance and compare that to industry trends and activities in specific geographies.

Earlier this year, the firm shared the findings from its Bridging the gap: Power up your data for channel partner transformation report, revealing that 97% of channel partners saw data as essential, underpinning their growth and transformation.

The firm found there was indeed an appetite for data, and more than half of the partners it quizzed (59%) strongly agreed the future of distribution includes the provision of data-led insights.

The Westcon-Comstor focus on data comes against a backdrop of growing awareness across the channel of the benefits of using information to support business decisions. Increasing numbers of partners are turning to AI to unlock some of the insights and efficiencies that the technology promises to deliver.

Managed services player SysGroup is a recent example of a business looking to embrace AI to improve its own position.

“To showcase the impact of AI transformation, we are implementing 31 use cases internally to transform SysGroup to demonstrate the benefits of AI,” said Heejae Chae, executive chairperson at SysGroup. “This will allow us to serve as a live case study of best practices for our customers and achieve significant productivity gains.”