Business Enablement a Necessary Value-Add for Resellers and Providers

Gartner identified digital business enablement as an important investment for IT service providers back in 2014. Today, business enablement is not a recommendation but rather something resellers and providers must incorporate into their sales and support processes to retain, attract and empower customers. This is because customers now look for solutions over services: they need a technology partner to advise, support and help them grow.

Specialist versus Generalist

A criterion customers use to pick a technology partner is expertise. Convenience was once a boon—customers wanted everything from a single place—but services today are too complex for independent providers and resellers to remain knowledgeable and competent in all fields. In specializing, the business can keep up-to-date (if not cutting-edge) and, consequently, make insightful recommendations. Not to mention, the level of support will exceed that of a generalist provider or reseller.

That said, IT businesses mustn’t disconnect from other markets. They must understand where and how their services integrate with others their customers might employ. Otherwise, the onus falls onto the customer to make all their systems communicate and coincide efficiently. The result will be frustration, wasted funds and resources and, ultimately, a negative experience.

Service Bundling and Tracking

One way a provider or reseller can demonstrate expertise is by unifying its own products and services. The piece-and-parcel model assumes the customer knows what to buy and with what else. For many customers, they lack the knowledge to make this choice. Bundling creates robust solutions—or at least shows each service or product at its maximum capacity.

For example, if an IT business sells both voice and messaging, presenting these services together under a UC platform shows how they work together as well as independently. Presenting each separately, though, may result in customers overlooking one of these services and perceiving a competitor's offering as fuller.

Providers and resellers must work to prevent such churn through careful customer monitoring. Without it, they lose touch with their customers, meaning they can no longer make astute recommendations. Consequently, they lack said business enablement services customers now need. Technology advances too quickly for IT businesses to not proactively monitor, recommend and check-in with customers to ensure their needs are continually met.