At Channel Connect, ScanSource, Intelisys Urge Partners to Go Hybrid
See pictures from the first two days of the Channel Connect in Nashville.
![Mike Bauer Intelisys Channel Connect Mike Bauer Intelisys Channel Connect](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt653a41efff37c038/652415649adb9a10a283c6d1/IMG_8125-e1664813410865.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
ScanSource CEO and chairman Mike Baur outlined ScanSource’s 30-year journey from a specalty value-added distributor to a hybrid distributor that sells both hardware and cloud services. According to Baur, ScanSource now works with more than 30,000 sales partner customers and 500 suppliers.
Perhaps one of the biggest moves on that journey was buying Intelisys six years ago. That business has consistently earned praise from ScanSource leadership during the publicly traded company’s earning call’s.
“Our story is that if we see the opportunity to expand our profits and margins, we’re willing to invest ahead of the profits. And I think that’s why you should be excited about what we’re doing now,” Baur said.
ScanSource president John Eldh offered a profile of the partners that have embraced ScanSource and Intelisys’ hybrid distribution strategy.
“The partners that are focused on hybrid solutions are extremely curious about their customer’s business and work to build broader solutions that address a broader set of business issues and ultimately demonstrate greater value to their customers,” Eldh said.
He said suppliers will be pleased to see partners adopting the model, as those partners work with 3.5 times more suppliers.
Gary Schick, director of sales, strategic business partners and alliances at Quest, this year’s Channel Connect conference is very unique in its emphasis on hybrid delivery.
That fits with how he said he’s trying to approach technology with customers. He described it as a “consumption model versus the sales model.”
“What capability are you looking to achieve? How do you want to consume it? Do you want to buy it and manage it yourself? Do you want to buy it and get my help managing it? Do you want to just use somebody else’s stuff, or do you want to run the cloud?” he told Channel Futures.
Baur emphasized the financial services his company can provide to partners. He noted that partners need to grow in order to attract top talent. And that growth often requires investment from an outside source.
He suggested that partner consider turning to their distributor for that help.
“What ScanSource has learned is, we need to use our balance sheet to help you. We want to do more of that. We want to make sure that if you need capital for growth,” Baur told the audience. “You don’t have to necessarily always go to your bank or always go to outside investors, but talk to our teams and our financial services about how we can help you. At the end of the day, our business is one of longterm growth.”
Xavier Egan leads Capital Asset Advisors, a company that deals in private equity, real estate and technology procurement.
He noted that the traditional telecom broker channel is facing a succession crisis, alongside other predominantly baby boomer-led industries.
Many of these agents, Egan said, have built extremely successful businesses that helped put their kids into college. But years later, they’re finding that their kids don’t want to take up the family business.
“Right now we’ve got a lot of great guys in this industry, but it’s really set up in that old world business style,” Egan told Channel Futures. “Being a agency of one is amply okay. You can be very successful, but it doesn’t scale necessarily. That doesn’t transfer very well in transition magnitude.””
That observation couples with already small size of the technology advisor space. Some have numbered the agent space at 10,000. Others put that number lower.
Egan found the space because he noticed that his customers in private equity and real estate were facing a technology gap. He had formed some one-off connections between his clients and different technology suppliers, but those vendors had left something to be desired.
One day Egan explained his problem to a peer from college, who introduced him to the agent channel.
“Without that one conversation that was so specific, I would have been unaware still to this day. The idea of a technology agency is seemingly this hush-hush magic spot that everybody’s not aware of, including the customer base,” Egan told Channel Futures.
Although the technology advisor/broker model makes sense to many people when described as “an insurance agent for technology” Egan said the next generation is as unaware of it as the generation that preceded it.
Ironically, many young people are talking about technology in school and discovering opportunities to work in IT. But for people like Jeffrey McKinnie, chief equality officer at One2Gration, said it’s more common to start on the manufacturer/vendor side.
“There was stock options. There was benefits. There was what seemed like great money, because everything is relative,” McKinnie told Channel Futures.
Egan said the channel will benefit by building more official pipelines that teach millennials and Gen Z’ers about its business model.
“More awareness and education is needed. And a pipeline of interns and activity of transition would have to be a part of that as well to really spread the wealth of knowledge and opportunity,” he said.
Intelisys hosted a celebration for its one-year-old Intelisys Diversity Program. The meeting featured program members as well as the Intelisys leadership team (pictured at the front).
The event featured extensive feedback from participating partners about what they need from Intelisys in order to continue growing.
Partners gathered at the Omni Nashville for the “Nash Bash” opening reception.
A sea of familiar faces assembled Sunday night.
That includes, from left to right, Laura Dashney (LanYap Networks) and Chris Palermo (GCN) of Upstack and Jim Glackin of Nitel.
Jamaal Savwoir, vice president of partner experience and marketing at Intelisys, a ScanSource company joined Ansley Hoke, senior vice president of marketing at ScanSource, to greet attendees during the opening keynote session.
John DeLozier, president of Intelisys and ScanSource’s modern communications unit, joined Tony Sorrentino, ScanSource president of speciality technology to talk about how their divisions are working with one another.
They shared five goals: grow revenue, increase wallet share, educate and enable, actionable data intelligence and driving adoption of hybrid and recurring revenue.
Casey Huffling, senior vice president of barcode and point-of-sale, Brian Cuppett, senior vice president of modern communications, and Chandler Legarreta, senior vice president of agency sales, joined DeLozier and Sorrentino on stage.
Casey Huffling, senior vice president of barcode and point-of-sale, Brian Cuppett, senior vice president of modern communications, and Chandler Legarreta, senior vice president of agency sales, joined DeLozier and Sorrentino on stage.
SCANSOURCE/INTELISYS CHANNEL CONNECT – Forty percent of agents will sell hardware and 35% of VARs will sell cloud in the next 12 months, according to data from ScanSource and Intelisys.
Executives at the hybrid distributor minced no words when it came to their desire for partners to sell hardware plus software and cloud-based offerings.
Intelisys’ John DeLozier
“We want you to understand the true hybrid distribution model. Because if you sold security to your customer and you have no contact center, somebody else is going to sell it. Somebody is asking that question right now,” said John DeLozier, president of Intelisys and ScanSource’s modern communications unit.
ScanSource’s John Eldh
And according to ScanSource leaders, the company’s base of resellers, agents, MSPs and IT integrators is embracing the message. ScanSource in its latest earnings release disclosed that more than 540 partners are selling in a hybrid fashion with ScanSource. According to ScanSource president John Eldh, these hybrid partners are reaping the benefits. Deal size has increased by a factor of 1.7, and sales have grown by a factor of 1.5, Eldh said.
ScanSource employees, partners and suppliers have gathered in Nashville for a long-anticipated in-person conference. It’s the largest event ScanSource has ever hosted, according to ScanSource senior vice president of worldwide marketing Ansley Hoke.
Channel Futures spoke to attendees and hosts about the trends they see with customers and partners.
Scroll through the images above to see the conversation about hybrid distribution and agent succession, as well as pictures of the Channel Connect event.
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