CRN Rising Stars pick sustainability and co-selling as top trends that will define 2020s
Co-selling and sustainability will be among the trends that will reshape what tech solutions providers will need to look like if they are to remain successful in the 2020s.
That's the verdict of three high-growth, high-profit resellers, MSPs and consultancies who took part in a CRN Rising Stars panel late last month.
Stuart Fenton, CEO of Microsoft Dynamics partner QUANTIQ, picked out co-selling as "by far the number one" trend on his radar, stressing that he had made peer-to-peer relationships central to his firm over the last five years.
"When you pull together, you can create much better solutions for a customer," he said.
"If you take the most successful organisations that we know in the industry today, they are - without exception - the best co-selling partner organisations there are. I think that's the number one factor."
Steve Brown, managing director at Sheffield-based Highlander Business Solutions agreed, explaining that his firm has recently forged partnerships with local peers in order to complete its proposition.
"We simply don't do a lot of the AI and sexier aspects of IT - and we ignored a lot of that previously," he said.
"We found some businesses on our doorstep that are dealing with some of the biggest companies in the UK and worldwide that we're now working with."
Francesca Lukes, chief commercial officer at London-based MSP Wanstor, cited sustainability as the most powerful incoming trend.
"The environmental impact of technology is a bit invisible. For most people, it's not really something that is front of mind in the same way as a plane flying overhead, or how much we've talked about the meat industry and cows in particular.
"But I think that shift is now happening. And we need to get onto the front foot of that in terms of calculating our carbon impact in being able to relay that to our customers and in the choices that we make - in the hardware we purchase, the datacentres we work with, the partners we work with."
CRN Rising Stars, which was produced in partnership with Agilitas, profiled seven of the UK's fastet-growing and most profitable channel partners. Read the report here.
