Are distributors right to say they are no longer broadliners?

After attending three of the biggest disties' events in recent weeks, Marian McHugh sums up the lay of the distribution landscape

May was a busy month for a certain section of the channel, as three of the UK's biggest distributors held their annual partner events.

I managed to clock up nearly 200 miles in total travelling to and from these events, including a journey involving two trains, two taxis and one extremely confused taxi driver to middle-of-nowhere Silverstone.

Arrow, Exertis and Ingram Micro Cloud may each have had their own takeaways for partners from their respective events, but for those of us who attended all three, the message was clear: none want to be seen as just a broadliner anymore.

Each made a big noise about the importance of services and software to their businesses, emphasising to partners that this was where demand was growing.

Here are my takeaways from each distributor's event.

Arrow's Vision

Of the three, Arrow had the most philosophical message for partners. Held at the Olympia in London, data was the overarching theme of keynotes and breakout sessions.

UK MD Mark McHale told the audience at his opening keynote that data will determine the size of the opportunity because customers and businesses are recognising the value of it as an asset.

He spoke of distribution having to become an "aggregator of technology" and working shoulder to shoulder with partners in conversations with customers.

"We have to get tools and services and people to be able to do that aggregation," he told CRN.

"People seem to think that just by putting one piece of tech with another that that is a solution, but that's not what we call a solution in our business.

"We have to go much higher and talk to end-user customers to really understand what they desire in their business and then twist it to tech to come back.

"That's how we see our role: helping our partners understand what the requirements really are, through the aggregation of technology."

The exec expressed frustration at the ongoing skills shortage in the channel and the difficulties in recruiting suitably skilled people, particularly those who are as commercially knowledgeable as they are technical.

"We coined the phrase ‘suit and sandal', which is someone who is a techie but also able to articulate the commercial benefits and aspects of the proposition - which is hard because they are opposite ends of the spectrum," said McHale.

Ingram ‘don't call us a broadliner' Micro

Ingram Micro Cloud, on the other hand, was having no such difficulties in getting the requisite staff on board. Or at least if it was, EVP Nimesh Davé was keeping shtum on the matter.

During his keynote presentation at its UK Cloud Summit in The Landmark Hotel in London, the cloud boss boasted of having over 700 software engineers working to ensure it was ahead of its competitors, as he talked up its CloudBlue commerce platform for partners.

The platform offers partners and end users a "curated catalogue", according to Davé.

"If you were to look at AWS' marketplace, there are tons of ISVs there, but try to find the one you want and that's the issue," he explained to CRN.

"You go there and you can't find it. So we take the right ones and personalise it to you."

Ingram Micro was the most vocal in its efforts to shed its ‘distributor' label, with Davé telling his audience at the summit that "software publisher" was a more accurate term.

Scott Murphy, director of cloud and advanced solution, echoed this stance and was adamant that Ingram Micro was no longer a distributor in the traditional sense.

"We don't see ourselves as a broadliner; we are working hard to move away from that into a software company and a solution provider," he said.

Exertis' exaltations

Silverstone played home to Exertis' Plug In event this year, which showed off its consumer and business goods.

Like its two competitors, the Irish-owned company emphasised its services offerings, which currently makes up 15 per cent of its business, with aims to grow that figure to 20 per cent in the next few years.

UK MD Paul Bryan's keynote celebrated its record results which had been published a couple of days prior to the event and focused on where it had seen the most success in the previous 12 months.

Bryan told CRN that the company would be focusing on audiovisual (AV), device-as-a-service (DaaS) and cloud to expand its services offerings, though he admitted it was "behind the curve" when it comes to the latter.

Exertis was the only one of the three that didn't outright reject the "broadliner" label, although Bryan did echo Arrow's sentiments that as the channel continues to change, the role of distribution will have to do so too in order to remain relevant.

"The reseller community is using distribution more," he said during his keynote.

"Yes, distribution is about shifting the boxes, but actually it's more about what services we can wrap around - whether it's a consumer or business space, as well as how we can we help leverage resellers into whatever area they are selling into."

Nothing in recent times has highlighted distribution's role in the channel quite as much as Brexit has, and Exertis was surprisingly the only one of the three to utter the B-word.

Bryan told the audience that when it comes to Brexit, distribution had to be to the channel what the UK government has proved it cannot be - strong and stable.

"On the business front, we are seeing fertile areas for growth, but we are seeing infrastructure investment and business projects being delayed and slower than normal," he stated.

United message

Despite their protestations of being called broadliners, the Arrow, Ingram Micro and Exertis execs all acknowledged that the traditional "box-shifting" element of distribution is still very strong, and is unlikely to disappear completely.

"It's not an either/or scenario," Exertis' Bryan said.

"We have to make sure that we are focused on our services and that it becomes endemic to the sale because then people rely on us more and we are stickier with the customer."

It is understandable that as the channel evolves, distribution wants to be seen to be doing the same.

Pivoting away from sole reliance on hardware could well prove to be a smart decision to avoid a similar fate to those of the now-bust Beta, Entatech and Steljes.

Exertis' Bryan is unconcerned about facing those same pitfalls as his former competitors.

"We are focusing on areas where we do see growth in the future and services strategy to make sure that we are delivering value-add," he stated.

"The people who are going under are probably businesses that perhaps haven't been as focused on that…I would say they didn't have a service-led approach."