There is so much talk of ecosystems amongst industry analysts, our peers and the media of late. But is it all just a buzzword and bit of hype? What does it mean for your tech business, and how will it affect your success and your customers?
That’s what I hope to demystify for you in this blog.
The Ecosystem Model and Why it Matters
First off, let’s define what we mean by an ecosystem and how this applies to the channel. When I interviewed Allan Adler on our ChannelTalks podcast, he defined ecosystems as follows:
A dynamic group of independent participants (who)…
orchestrated to innovate around platforms (what)…
to deliver customer centric, modular, interconnected outcomes (why).
So why is there so much talk of ecosystems right now?
The tech market landscape has changed, and this shift has been driven largely by two things. The first, is the cloud migration and consumption movement. With technology being consumed in smaller, monthly instalments, there’s been an explosion in the number of transactions that need to be proactively managed - anticipated, automated, deployed, billed, fulfilled in a frictionless manner.
The second, is the ongoing commoditisation of the technology itself. Customers don’t care so much about the actual product or solution. They care about the value and the outcomes that technology brings. And, this is where the customer centricity which Allan mentioned in the definition above comes to play.
So, as the market landscape continues to change, how do tech businesses evolve and adapt to changing customer expectations? The answer is the ecosystem model.
From Digital to Value Transformation
The narrative is shifting from digital transformation to value transformation. And as a result, the partner ecosystem needs to work together to drive the best possible outcomes for the customer. This requires an ecosystem-centric approach, that places the customer at the very centre. According to Allan, the days of people going it alone and trying to get customers to buy monolithic products in an ecosystem environment are over.
iasset.com CEO Scott Frew, believes there needs to be less control and more collaboration within the channel in order for an ecosystem model to work. He says that: “Todays’ ecosystem market is all about the quality of data you’re providing to your ecosystem partners. So, it’s more a collaborative economy rather than a control economy. I see this with vendors even today, large vendors that know better, are still trying to control all the partnerships, all the transactions, forcing use of their portals, which means there is no knowledge share. You need to share good, accurate data with all of the parties needed to make that transaction successful.”
Allan Adler agrees. “What makes an ecosystem special is that there’s some degree of orchestration – notice I didn’t use the word control. That doesn’t work anymore. Orchestration is choice – you don’t have to be orchestrated. What makes digital ecosystems really interesting is that even a services company, a VAR, an MSP, SI, consultant - they still have the ability to innovate around a platform. For example, they can design a bespoke service that are unique to a particular use case. That’s an innovation, that’s IP applied and it creates stickiness.”
Channel Transformation
Imagine an ecosystem centric transaction platform that meets the ultimate technology procurement needs of the customer - but driven by the channel that serves them. Rather than a myriad of isolated portals or tools that satisfy only the vendor’s needs.
As Allan says, there needs to be an aggregation point. Those serving the customer want an Ecosystem CPQ to transact the net-new opportunities with the expand, extend and retirement opportunities from the beginning.
This digital orchestration requires an intelligent platform, which is capable of sharing data in a safe, secure manner, across multiple (not singular) partner ecosystems. Each participant sees the information that is relevant to them and delivers value to the customer accordingly. When executed effectively, this platform would proactively analyse installed base data to anticipate current and future opportunities that help fulfil the digital transformation needs and desired business outcomes for each end customer.
The key here is for the entire process to be proactive, seamless and automated as much as possible. So it’s important that we don’t default back to using legacy tools that don’t integrate.
Since 2008, Scott has been building and perfecting what he calls the “global channel ecosystem”. His vision way back then was to break down channel silos and enable collaboration, by eliminating common data and transactional issues that occur within tech businesses. He identified the need for the channel to have a single source of truth that will not only enable greater operational efficiencies, but also deliver better outcomes to the end customer. So he created iasset.com - a standardised platform, where everyone – vendors, partners and even partners’ partners can interact and exchange data in a secure, automated manner.
Closing words
The channel as we know it, is transforming. Pretty soon, it will no longer look like the traditional, linear supply chain model that we are all used to. Consider where your business wants to sit within this new playing field, and what sort of people, processes and tools you will need to help get there.
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