While at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando DisneyWorld Arrow (NYSE: ARW) tried its hand at furthering partner-to-partner collaboration by developing a Web site called Virtual Bench.
Virtual Bench tries to push collaboration onto the partner community by providing sales leads through resellers and system integrators via social networking tools.
I commend Arrow for this effort and I love the sports reference but lets hope solution providers are riding the pine for too long.
Partner-to-partner collaboration is a noble cause in the IT industry but not a lot of partners do it for various reasons. Let’s see the first major problem is that competition. Channel partners do not trust rivals in either a local market or nationwide. The second reason is the perception it gives to a customer. Think about: partner ABC tells its customer that it will be his or her trusted advisor and then brings in XYZ reseller in for some help. How does that look?
There are also numerous legal issues to work out.
Partner-to-partner collaboration is so task heavy that several solution providers don’t both with it.
Sean Kerins, president of Arrow North America, said that the distributor has the ability to connect resellers to a community. Currently Arrow has more than 13,000 resellers in its network and that Virtual Bench can enhance more networking opportunities without channel executives leaving their desk. He’s right. Distributors like Arrow can facilitate partner-to-partner collaboration better than a vendor can. However, an online portal is challenging way to do it. The best examples of partner-to-partner collaboration come from buying groups such as Ingram Micro’s VentureTech Network and Tech Data’s TechSelect program. These two groups are mature and they meet once a month in their local community and two a year at North American conferences. These meetings are face-to-face and people can put a face to the name. There are plenty of mixers, cocktail receptions and dinners that help these partners get to know each other. And, over a period of time it has led to partners working with each other.
The other benefit to working face-to-face with a distributor is that you can iron-out issues together. For example, the legal issue with partnering. A few year’s ago at a TechSelect conference in Vancouver the distributor took on that issue and came up with a solution that works for the most part for several of their members. These legal documents are a template but from reseller feedback cover most of the sticky legal issues that prevent true partner-to-partner collaboration.
I’m not saying that Virtual Bench, which by the way is currently available to Arrow ECS’ IBM Business Partners in North America, shouldn’t be done. All I am saying is that it should be complimentary and not the only thing.
Arrow did say that Virtual Bench will be expanded to include other Arrow ECS supplier lines.What I really liked about Virtual Bench is that Arrow sales and technical staff will be contributing their expertise and services to the portal. For those partners in Arrow’s network who are searching for skilled resources this will help them.
Virtual Bench is accessible through the Arrow ECS secure reseller portal and is built on IBM Lotus Connections, a social software solution that enables communities of users to build relationships, share information and collaborate on tasks online.
Resellers who subscribe to Virtual Bench can get a RSS feed that will keep them updated on new posts for their topics of interest and that will notify them when they receive messages or responses from other resellers.
