Autotask's international VP outlines the vendor's channel plans following its recent involvement in the CRN European Channel Leadership Forum
Describe your company in five words or fewer
Passionate, customer-centric, innovative, fun, dynamic
Why did you participate in the CRN European Channel Leadership Forum earlier this month?
The Forum was a fantastic opportunity to meet leaders from the top channel providers in the UK and to learn about key trends impacting the channel.
What do you think is the most challenging trend in the channel today?
From our perspective, it is security. With all the recent cyberattacks particularly ransomware on a global scale, businesses are demanding that their service providers can keep their data secure. Our recent global benchmarking study—Metrics that Matter—showed that 44 per cent of the more than 1,000 respondents now say security is their client's #1 priority and a key driver of new business.
If you had to give your channel partners one piece of advice, what would it be?
I would tell them to capitalise on the momentum and shift to the cloud and embrace the endpoint. These areas offer significant opportunity for channel providers to stand out in a crowded marketplace and differentiate their offerings to help their customers digitally transform.
What are the three most important things partners need from vendors to be successful?
Trust: the partner and the vendor must share this unequivocally for the relationship to be successful. Innovation: the vendor needs to be constantly disrupting and striving to offer new ways to do business better, faster and easier. Strong support and account management: a true partnership means you're supporting your partners (customers) at every step—implementation and beyond—to help them truly maximise their investment.
What can the channel expect from Autotask over the next five years?
Continued leadership in service and business management as we help our partners become leaders in their area of expertise with valuable educational, networking events and onsite training; new managed services offerings tied into our PSA-RMM platform to allow easy provisioning, management and billing; and constant innovation like our new intuitive ticket interface and our latest major release of endpoint management.
Mark Banfield is senior vice president & general manager, international at Autotask