Resellers and Consultancy: Advice Squad

Consultancy can easily be provided by resellers, provided they set realistic objectives for themselves, says Annie Gurton

It is hardly surprising that resellers and integrators cannot afford to hire first-class expertise when recruitment adverts show that consultancy jobs can command salaries of #180,000 plus. Yet consultancy ranks up there with training and support in the top triumvirate of services. Users expect it and resellers are keen to provide it, so how can it be delivered credibly, efficiently and profitably?

The secret, according to Chris Leak, marketing director of Pegasus, is to play to your strengths. ?There is no reason why resellers and integrators cannot provide first class consultancy,? he says. ?In fact they should be doing so. They have all the advantages: small focused businesses and specific expertise. The only reason they may give a bad service is if they are too ambitious and aim too high.?

Many resellers must have been aiming too high because overall the industry has a bad name ? and it is getting worse ? for taking the money and not giving value. Julia Jones, director of education and services at Persona, agrees that some of the resellers and integrators that offer consultancy services should not be doing so.

?Yet by working more closely with large vendor organisations and taking advantage of the skills that are often on offer, they can put themselves in the position of offering the most professional and expensive consultancy skills around,? she says.

One problem is that, along with partnership, the word consultancy can be used, abused and turned on its head to mean anything. No definitive definition exists, and the term can cover a multitude of nebulous added-value services.

David Smith, channel sales and marketing manager at Microsoft, says the fact that it is an umbrella term can be used to resellers? advantage. ?They have to focus, look at the competition and what they are providing, and try to differentiate themselves by offering a unique service,? he says.

Yet the user?s complaints won?t go away. Apocryphal tales abound of consultants with an integrator firm being hired to do the job, to be replaced by a trainee who, it turns out, has been assigned to do the job. Or a consultant with expertise in one area being asked to work on a project covering a completely different area of knowledge, with predictable results. This usually occurs because a reseller cannot afford to hire enough of the right staff, and chooses to spread the few experts it has between as many jobs as possible.

Yet many of the problems which users and integrators or resellers find themselves embroiled in could have been avoided by proper forward planning. Jones says both parties need to retain control and define their objectives. If that?s done, many potential problems can be avoided.

?Often the best expert is someone from within the reseller business,? she says. ?But because many reseller businesses are small and cannot afford to have the necessary breadth of knowledge available all the time, they should feel able to draw on experts from other sources.?

As a distributor, Jones says that Persona is ideally placed to be such a third party. ?We have teams of consultants available to resellers and we sell consultancy services in the same way as we do products, with a well-defined limit to our business involvement and a clearly defined opportunity for profit to the reseller. We are already set up to service the resellers with products, so adding consultancy to that portfolio is an obvious step.?

Yet many distributors and vendors are criticised by resellers for not making their consultancy resources available to small or even medium-sized resellers. Leak says that although Pegasus has maintained its focus on every one of its 400 Opera resellers, some vendors have been guilty of focusing on their top resellers and ignoring the smaller ones.

?They make bold-sounding claims about helping smaller resellers with marketing and consultancy, but when it comes down to it, the resellers find that the help is just not there when they need it.?

Resellers should be able to turn to their vendor suppliers and to the distributors for help, he says, but many have cut back rather than improve the consultancy available to resellers.

?The situation was better a few years ago,? he says, ?but I suppose now some vendors realise that the consultancy costs them a lot and they want that resource to go to the largest resellers.?

Tim Beadle, director with marketing services agency PCMC, agrees that vendors can and should do more to help resellers provide consultancy services. ?It?s the old 80/20 rule,? he says. ?They just want their expensive consultants to be used by the 20 per cent of resellers that do 80 per cent of the business. They can justify the returns, but they can?t justify letting small resellers use their consultants. The returns are never big enough.?

Beadle provides marketing consultancy to the channel, but says it is sometimes better to just give a bit of free advice rather than try to turn every opportunity into a profitable situation. ?The resellers have to take a view on whether they can really charge for consultancy. Sometimes all that is required is a bit of advice, and anything more is just a waste of money on the user?s part. Taking money for delivering very little does no one any good in the long run, and resellers should regard all business as long term,? he says.

But as BTN?s Mark Andrews points out, to some extent it?s a case of buyer beware in the consultancy market. He says: ?Consultancy should be offered as part of a total service, and when the solution is as specialised as ours, in the secure remote access market, then we are the experts with knowledge to pass on.? But he admits that many people are not totally clued up on what network security techniques are available, and there is plenty of room for cowboy consultants to take money from unsuspecting clients.

He adds: ?What customers really want is solutions to their problems which highlight areas or risks which they may not have been aware of. That is what they are paying for.?

Smith agrees. ?It really is very simple to focus on what the customers are looking for, and that is an easy to understand solution to their problem or need. That is what successful consultancy is all about. The trouble comes when people try to provide consultancy in areas where they have little or no expertise, and try to fudge the issues so that they appear to be more knowledgeable than they really are.?

Just as some resellers and integrators are notorious for trying to expand their remit, others take a professional approach, which includes making sure that the customers are aware of their responsibilities in ensuring that the consultancy is honest and worthwhile.

Nick Vossbark of The Last Word says: ?Cowboys just add to the disillusion of users and give the industry a bad name. The industry has a responsibility to itself to try to stamp out bad practices as much as possible.?

He recommends that customers look for consultants which understand their business needs and drivers, and are not just a part of the IT delivery mechanism. ?Generalists are no good,? he says. ?The only good reseller consultants are those which are focused.?

Vossbark says the flavour of the reseller business comes from the top, and good management principles which are installed by the top management quickly trickle down to all staff and have a positive effect on the way the company works with its customers.

?Small players can offer a lot to users because they are so focused. They are more likely to be keen to do a good job and give good service. Many user organisations know that, and prefer to have consultancy which is local if possible.?

Large consultancies may also not want to take on small specialist IT-based projects ? for them, anything under #1 million is often too small.

At the same time, resellers are well placed to provide consultancy as a follow-through service after the sale is made and the system installed.

Ian Cochrane, channel programmes manager of Sun Service, believes that the role of a specialist supplier is to underwrite the opportunity created by a reseller which is key to customer satisfaction.

?The reseller knows the customer and knows the market, but the real in-depth specialist knowledge is often so expensive that they can?t afford to have that calibre of consultant on the staff. We don?t expect the reseller to invest in recruiting all the right people. We are happy to work with them to make sure that the customer gets all the high-level consultancy they need.?

This approach, says Cochrane, also frees up the reseller to continue to focus on its strengths, and finding new business. ?They shouldn?t try to dilute their skills by attempting to provide every service that customers want,? he says. ?Resellers and integrators have an obligation to keep up quality. They can?t do that if they try to be a Jack of all trades.?

Another way of providing high-level consultancy services is to partner with another reseller or integration firm, sharing consultancy resources. Channel and reseller events such as Comdef, organised by Richmond Events (this year it is at the end of May), are often ideal informal forums for such meetings, where reciprocal arrangements can be initiated. Few resellers are willing to talk on the record about such agreements but they undoubtedly take place, usually with the client unaware that they are dealing with anyone other than their own integrator or reseller.

Consultancy is a mixed bag: the variety of skills and area of expertise is huge, and the rewards can be high. It is also prone to coming down with pneumonia when the rest of the IT world comes down with a cold. Resellers need to take great care not to take on more than they can deliver.

But, if it is properly thought through and correctly managed, consultancy is highly lucrative and a great differentiator. Consider it, add it to your portfolio, but proceed with care.

How to succeed in consultancy

• Be focused
• Deliver your areas of expertise
• Don?t claim to be expert in areas where you are not
• Don?t be paranoid about using expert consultants where necessary. They are likely to be more interested in getting long-term business from you than stealing specific clients.
• Make sure your customer knows how they should be managing the consultancy
• If the client seems unsure about setting deadlines and milestones, then set them yourself.
• Have one person assigned to the client from beginning to end.
• If you think you are going over budget or are getting out of your depth, call a meeting with the client and tell them as quickly as possible rather than muddle on.

Contact numbers

BTN 01734 774646

Microsoft 01734 270000

PCMC 0118 988 0400

Pegasus 01536 495000

Persona 01372 737321

Richmond

Events 0181 332 2422

Sunservice 01276 204444