May/June 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

Quite simply, the average channel seller surveyed by Edge Strategies for Avant offered four communication/net- work services, and when their clients are approached by a channel sales competitor offering a service that they don’t currently sell, it puts that provider at risk of customer attrition. “The comparison of two pairs of ser- vices revealed a selling gap that spells potential danger for partners, so we developed what we call the ‘Channel Risk Score’ to help quantify partners’ exposure,” said Avant executives. For example, partners that sell IaaS services overwhelmingly also sell data networks. But only 39 percent of part- ners primarily selling data networks also sell IaaS. This creates a potential risk to the 61 percent of data network sellers without IaaS in their portfolios because their customers could seek IaaS solutions from a vendor that also sells the same data networks, Avant ex- ecutives argue. “IaaS sellers are getting really good at selling data networks, with 77 percent of them having sold data networks in 2018.” The analysis found that channel partners selling data network services were the most at risk from competitors that sell IaaS (38 risk score), coloca- tion (35) and security-aaS (31) when, in fact, they don’t offer those services themselves. Partners that focus on UCaaS and contact center-aaS are most at risk from attackers that ap- proach their clients with IaaS (29), security-aaS and colocation (26). For voice-centric partners, the biggest risks are sellers of contact center-aaS (22), IaaS (21) and colocation (19). The threat from security-aaS provid- ers is worth noting since the number of providers selling security is expected to skyrocket. According to survey results, just three in 10 channel sellers cur- rently offer SEaaS, but an additional 35 percent plan to offer the category within the next two years. That would place SEaaS as the fourth most popular service provided by channel sellers, behind only data connectivity, UCaaS/ CCaaS and SD-WAN. T he deeper a product set, the more a partner is protect- ed from customer attrition, or so suggests analysis by Avant of its second annual “Cloud Channel Survey.” By Martin Vilaboy channel management What’s Your Channel Retention Risk? Data Networks vs. laaS Seller Reciprocity Source: Avant; Edge Strategies 11 9 2 ital cies Other 38 RISK SCORE laaS Sellers Data Sellers 39% 77% 23% 61% Data w/o laaS Data sellers who also sell laaS laaS sellers who also sell Data laaS w/o Data 60 Channel Vision | May - June, 2019