Intelisys President: Partner 'Angst' About ScanSource Acquisition Is Gone

If Intelisys partners came to this week’s Channel Connect 2016 with angst and concerns about the ScanSource acquisiton, “it’s gone, it doesn’t exist.”

That’s what Intelisys President Jay Bradley said during an interview with Channel Partners as the conference drew to a close. Buck Baker, ScanSource’s president of worldwide communications and services, also participated in the interview.

Just over a month ago, ScanSource completed its acquisition of the master agent. The deal is being heralded as the first of its kind for the industry.

Bradley said there have been expectations in the industry that this “convergence or consolidation between the hardware and the services side will happen.”

“We’re proud to be first, we’re proud of the partner that we chose in ScanSource and I know they feel the same about us, and it represents a next step,” he said. “I sent out a letter to our partners when we first announced it and said hey, here’s a great next step in the evolution of our industry, and that’s how we feel about it and we think it’s created something special. Our partners expect us to be first, we’re comfortable leading the way and that’s part of this next step in the evolution of both of our industries.”{ad}

As it stands today, “99.9 percent of (Intelisys’) partners understand the deal, they understand how we’re moving forward and they’re 100 percent behind us,” Bradley said.

When ScanSource acquires a company, it’s “not really to bring it into the ScanSource fold, into the business,” Baker said.

“What we want Intelisys to do is continue what they’re doing, growing this marketplace as a master agent, working with their partners, their sales agents, and trying to grow that business,” he said. “There may be some integration of some functions that these guys may want help with from us, but for the most part, they were a successful business before we acquired them and we still see that as kind of the main thing for us to go forward with right now. Over time, there may be some areas where they will ask our help and that type of thing. But for the most part…

{vpipagebreak}

…Jay runs this business and we want him to continue to run this business and keep it in the direction and trajectory that it’s going in.”

More partner opportunities from the acquisition will become apparent over the next several months, Bradley said.

“In the meantime, where there are opportunities, both sides are absolutely moving forward with those opportunities,” he said. “We certainly see some interest from the Intelisys partner community in hardware already, even more than we thought, so there’s an opportunity to, on a one up basis, move forward with those things as we put together more strategic plans.”

During an Intelisys executive leadership town hall, partners were given an opportunity to ask questions. One partner expressed concern that ScanSource’s culture differs greatly from Intelisys.

In response, Rick Sheldon, Intelisys co-founder, said he and Rick Dellar built their company “on the same backbone” as ScanSource’s founders.

“We didn’t need to sell, we weren’t looking to sell, we met a group of people with similar values and who were charming, and then began to see an exciting future,” Dellar said. “The core value system … it’s nearly identical. You can build and scale on a shared culture.”{ad}

In August, RingCentral, a provider of cloud-based business communications and collaboration, announced a partnership with Intelisys to help it further expand its global cloud communications footprint.

Zane Long, RingCentral’s vice president of channel sales, said ScanSource and Intelisys are a “terrific combination.”

“I think what ScanSource can learn from Intelisys is how a really, really well-run international master agency program is managed,” he said. “I think the combination for the two will prove nothing but success, and that means that we’ll be successful as well because I think what will happen is there will be greater access to what I call legacy or premise-based partners from the ScanSource side who will begin to identify more with the monthly recurring residual side of the house. And I think that combination is why that makes it such a great acquisition and partnership.”