Ecosystems benefit everyone

As reseller groups are gaining popularity, firms must move fast to find their place in an ecosystem, writes Jon Lane

The channel has heard much about vendor ecosystems lately, but what of reseller ecosystems? In a recent Channel Insights survey of more than 4,000 resellers across the UK, France and Germany, reseller ecosystems are fast gaining popularity.

The survey found 59 per cent of UK respondents considered reseller ecosystems to be an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas on markets, sales, differentiation and service solutions.

The ecosystem concept relies on mutual agreement between resellers with different but complementary offerings to come together and provide a holistic solution to the end-customer. Like the vendor ecosystem, end-customers benefit all round. They no longer have to worry about selecting, co-ordinating and integrating solutions from multiple resellers. The cost savings can also be significant, as the resellers would already be well-versed in making the solutions work together so the end-customer need not pay for consultancy time to achieve this.

For the reseller, the benefits are numerous. In the first instance, resellers can make themselves more attractive to the end-user; they can also compete with bigger players with services they wouldn’t be able to provide on their own. Lead generation is also an attractive benefit, as each participant drives business for all in the ecosystem.

Still in the early phase of evolution, many types of ecosystems are cropping up; but one model is already becoming dominant – the vertically-aligned ecosystem.

Here, resellers come together to develop a complete IT solution with the needs of a particular sector in mind. For example, an alliance of resellers may form to service the government sector, selling a packaged service for e-enablement.

It has often been said of groups that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, and this has never been more evident than in the partner ecosystem. Playing on customers’ desire for a single point of contact for everything they need allows a community of resellers to out-manoeuvre the individual VAR.

But resellers need to be quick off the mark. With premier firms fast forming new alliances, VARs coming late to the party may find that their place in a preferred ecosystem has already been taken by a competitor. Resellers who want to excel in 2005 should act now to identify best-fit associates in the channel and form complementary relationships that mutually drive their businesses.

Jon Lane is director of BT Indirect Channels