CV_MarApr_22_2

for individual vendors. Pax8 also displaced costs required for vendorprovided support. For its composite organization, Forrester projected reduced support costs of $297,580 over three years. The partner interviewees also reported increased their sales opportunities. On the one hand, the Pax8 marketplace made it easier for end customers to purchase core cloud services, bringing MSP partners more revenues by enabling the easier sale of add-on services related to integration, security and backup. What’s more, the marketplace model enabled firms to increase sales at both the low and high ends, show the findings. “At the low end, interviewees shared that their firms were not targeting the long tail of smaller deals as their relatively high cost of sales made them uneconomical,” said the report. “Self-service for end clients via Pax8’s platform lowered sales costs and enabled MSPs to book more small-deal revenue. At the high end, Pax8’s managed services supported MSPs on larger migrations that would otherwise be beyond their internal capabilities, enabling them to close larger deals as well.” Lastly, Pax8’s marketplace platform brought in further revenues to MSPs by connecting them to vendor market development fund programs that they were either unaware of or too busy to manage. B2B decisions makers are regularly using more channel than ever before to interact with suppliers, McKinsey’s annual surveys make clear, up from five channels on average used during the decision journey in 2018 to as much as 10 by December 2021. Online marketplaces, along with remote human interaction, has been a significant factor in this share shift. To meet the expectations of and provide value to an increasingly omnichannel-inclined customers, sales professionals need to act as “journey orchestrators,” argued McKinsey analysts, “guiding customers to the channels that, according to their buyer intelligence, are most helpful to specific audiences and purchasing stages.” Suppliers also may need to shift their online product mix and launch new pricing processes to streamline quoting and approvals for large-value purchases, said McKinsey analysts. As with most shifts to the cloud computing and digital, value propositions once again lean more toward customer experience and support, specialization, service integration and personalization, as well as after-market services, and less upon onsite infrastructure and servicing dollars. “This could deflate channel firms that now feel displaced from the sale,” admitted CompTIA in its annual IT industry outlook, “but marketplaces don’t necessarily have to do so. A synergy exists for those channel firms that adjust in their business model to be more consultative and specialized, while emphasizing the after-market services that customers will very much need after initial tech purchase.” o 49 MARCH - APRIL 2022 | CHANNELV ISION

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