News in the Channel - issue #14

2024 PREVIEW

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Chris Angus , VP, EMEA Contact Centre Engagement , 8x8 Companies are accelerating digital

Regulatory changes will also continue to pose challenges for partners - such as the ISDN switch off. With this quickly approaching, partners will need to ensure they understand the changes and whether they will impact their customer base. Then, if their customers are impacted, providing them with alternative solutions will be crucial. We also can’t ignore the fact that every business is being asked to do more with less and AI and ML will play a fundamental role in overcoming this. AI will allow businesses to service more customers with the headcount they have in place, as well as being able to make typically repetitive job roles more interesting. AI and ML can fulfil mundane tasks and allow employees to take on more challenging roles, which will in turn help to attract and retain talent, while servicing more customers in a consistent fashion.

transformation – we’ve seen five years of early adopters going through the process and now the late adopters are joining the party. To keep pace with this in 2024, partners will need to offer their customers everything required to transform digitally in an easy, consolidated way. It’s easy to use multiple vendors to supply one solution, such as a contact centre solution, however customers today want everything in one place. Partners will therefore need to consolidate the vendor profile for the customer by ensuring they have vendors in their portfolio that can sell everything as one package - from UC, CC and chat solutions to analytics, integrations and professional services. Gone are the days of piecing together five different vendors to create one solution for a customer.

Chris Angus

8x8.com

Richard Eglon , CMO, Nebula Global Services When comparing to 2022, Nebula

This is the most confident I've been going into a New Year since pre-pandemic times, for several reasons. Firstly, the need from the end customer driving more outcome-based solutions focused around XaaS is having a positive impact on businesses such as Nebula. Our channel-only, vendor agnostic, global services model means we are being positioned by our channel partners as a much more strategic solutions partner in the buying cycle. Secondly, the lifecycle of many tech products is coming to the end of their prescribed vendor cycles, and customers that have sustainability and decarbonisation targets to meet want to work with technology partners who are aligned to these needs. This is creating a huge opportunity for sustainably focused service organisations such as Nebula that look to source-local, source-responsible and source-ethical when it comes to technology services. Finally, with the rise of AI, IoT, cybersecurity and hybrid cloud to name but a few, the core network infrastructure across many industries is reaching capacity after years of under-investment. As a result, the demand for highly-skilled technical resource to deliver complex projects across multiple territories has already started to rise and will continue to throughout 2024.

experienced a more positive 2023, in terms of increased revenues and a greater number of pipeline opportunities. However, coupled with those green shoots of recovery have been many obstacles to doing business with our customers such as supply chain issues, increased operational costs, companies sweating technology assets, geo-political factors and cost of living impact. In the interim, it seems that standing still has become the new growth trend for many customers, with operational overhead impacting top line revenue growth greater than ever before. As a result, Nebula and many other channel firms I have been speaking with have been focusing on upskilling, re-positioning and leveraging existing resource and talent to best prepare themselves for 2024 and beyond. One of the main USPs for the channel is the ability to adapt in challenging times through innovation and agility. This is why we are starting to see rays of sunshine from emerging technology areas that have a bias around sustainability, cybersecurity, XaaS and AI to name but a few. Never has it been more apparent on how important it is for channel firms to unite and lead from the front in order to drive sustainable change for the collective good in an authentic and transparent manner.

Richard Eglon

nebulaglobalservices.com