Wholesaler Giacom has outlined a £10bn market opportunity for the UK Channel. With over 99 percent of SMBs still failing to employ dedicated internal IT support, small businesses still purchase and deploy technology without the appropriate expertise.  

Giacom outlined the challenges small businesses face today as it announced Union Street and Digital Wholesale Solutions after the latter acquired both companies in 2020.  

Nathan Marke, COO of Giacom, said: “We are still seeing small businesses trying to do IT themselves and not doing a very good job! 

 “We know the biggest challenge for UK businesses right now is increasing productivity, so for partners to be able to help them automate and take that headache away across network, mobile, cloud, and SaaS (Giacom’s key product areas) is a huge opportunity which we estimate is about £10bn.” 

Terry O’Brien, CEO of Giacom, said his vision for the last four years is now coming together, helping partners address small businesses’ challenges. 

Giacom’s new cloud platform, called Cloud Market, will bring the best of Giacom’s business units together for partners in a single portal. Its vision has been to simplify channel partners’ lives by becoming a single source supplier of Comms, Cloud, Hardware, and Billing services. 

O’Brien said: “We have 5,000 partners across the UK, and they are all looking for opportunities to either move to an MSP model, if they haven’t already, and then ensure they can increase their wallet share of their existing customers. 

“For us, the move to a 100 percent indirect provider a few years ago was an essential part of our vision.  

“Now we have completed the integration of our acquired businesses and unified our platforms; we believe the channel has something compelling to help them go after that £10bn market opportunity with our platform.”  

Solving Common SMB Challenges

According to Giacom’s research, 50 percent of SMB tech spend is transacted with carriers or put or directly from the likes of Microsoft and consumer retailers like PC World. In O’brien’s eyes, spending should be travelling through the experts that can drive a better outcome for businesses. 

Part of the issue is how SMB businesses typically deploy and manage their technology, often leaving their systems and data vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Marke said: “SMBs are the most attacked part of the UK economy. Forty percent of all businesses with less than 40 employees were attacked last year, and then 10 percent of those businesses didn’t recover.” 

Productivity is another critical area Giacom thinks the Channel can help businesses.  

The UK languishes sixth for productivity in the G7, behind only Japan (which hasn’t seen its economy grow for 25 years). One of the most effective ways to boost productivity is to deploy technology, automate parts of the business, and improve customer experience. 

AI will be a crucial technology for partners to understand and monetise if it wants to position themselves as a critical productivity enhancer in the future.  

Marke said: “I believe if these small businesses have a good channel partner, it will really help them drive productivity. 

“We think of ourselves as a buying consortium, and we spend about £250m with our suppliers so those smaller partners can compete with the bigger players on price.” 

Channel visibility is another critical concern. In a recent survey where Giacom asked 1,000 SMBs if they knew a local technology specialist (i.e. a channel partner) that could help them with their problems, 60 percent responded ‘no’.

Cloud Market will include tools to help enhance the visibility of the Channel and enable partners to capture leads from businesses looking for technology help in their area. According to Marke, it’s a data-driven approach to helping partners stand out from the crowd. 

It’s an approach that O’brien is entirely behind, having committed to investing £12 million in the platform over the next two years.  

 

 



from UC Today https://ift.tt/IFrjVO5