Channel Connect: Big Opportunities Ahead From ScanSource-Intelisys Acquisition

CHANNEL CONNECT — Master agent Intelisys opened its Channel Connect 2016 with an overall message for its partners: Change is coming and change is good.

Tech distributor ScanSource has completed its acquisition of Intelisys in a first-of-its-kind acquisition for the channel.

The Intelisys conference, in Napa, California, has attracted more than 1,100 attendees and more than 80 supplier partners.

Andrew Pryfogle, Intelisys’ senior vice president of cloud transformation, said this community is “uniquely positioned to take advantage of change.”

“Their customers look to them for leadership when it comes to change and their colleagues do, and our partner community is in a position where they’re going to be able to leverage the opportunities that come to them from change,” he said. “One of those changes, of course, is the acquisition of Intelisys that we think changes our industry. That’s presented already massive new opportunities for our partner community.”

The channel in the telecom sector, for decades, hasn’t received the validation it deserves from the larger marketplace, “and I think that’s what this acquisition does, it finally puts a value on what a business like this is worth,” Pryfogle said.

“And it says to the larger industry that this channel really knows how to move the needle when it comes to recurring revenue, and that’s what everything is shifting to,” he said. “This as a service model is what’s going to drive innovation going forward. That’s why this acquisition changes the industry. Before now, people didn’t really know what this channel was and it was accounting for a few percentage points of the overall spin. You’re going to see that dramatically go up … an anticipated increase of over $40 billion in spend shifting to the channel in the next four years.”

Mike Baur, ScanSource CEO, (pictured above) told attendees the opportunity is “interesting, big enough and will move the needle for ScanSource.” Being a public company, ScanSource’s investors are expecting a lot of from this deal and “my goal is to deliver that,” he said.

“There are a lot of people at ScanSource that are eager to engage,” he said. “We’ll make some…

…mistakes, but our passion, I hope, will convince you that we want to do the right thing. Tell us (if) we screwed up, we’ll fix it. The top people at Intelisys are still the top people at Intelisys.”

Baur said ScanSource isn’t going to change: accurate and on-time payments; dedicated “focus on your business”; Intelisys carrier contracts; and access to top decision-makers.

The strategic rationale behind the acquisition was a large addressable market with expected channel shift and acquiring the “best master agent,” he said.

“We have never sold to an end user and we never will,” Baur said.

Rick Dellar, Intelisys co-founder, said another thing that won’t change is the focus that “we have on this sales partner community.”

“Every one of us is in customer service, that’s where it starts and that’s where the Intelisys-ScanSource story continues,” he said.

Cary Stallings, sales engineer at Net7 Solutions, said hopefully there’s a synergy between Intelisys and ScanSource that will “enable the company to grow for many years.” Net7 is a channel partner for Intelisys and technology consultant for companies.{ad}

“I have nothing but a tremendous amount of optimism in this industry and in Intelisys to help us penetrate this opportunity ahead of us,” he said.

Diane Smith, president and CEO of ChoiceTel, said her company already works with both Intelisys and ScanSource, “so we sort of have that hybrid model in place right now.”

“We’re really excited about the combination because together it will be even stronger than it was before,” she said. “Knowing both models, we really see how it comes together really well.”