Top challenges and opportunities facing channel providers in 2023

The ability to work from anywhere will continue to be a major priority this year and with that in mind the channel providers, whether its resellers or MSPs its important to ensure they can deliver the right level of capabilities and value across their customer’s whole organisation. In this post we’ll be discussing some of the key things that need to be considered, including opportunities and challenges that need to be considered to be successful in the market. 

Staff retention and customer engagement need to be front and centre 

We are all under pressure to keep good people particularly since many can now work from anywhere. So, whilst the channel has access to a larger pool of people, employees also have far wider choices.  For the first time, some smaller players will need to ensure their management processes are coherent, consider career progression plans, and watch out for unexpected changes in performance amongst flexible workers to minimise the risk of quiet firing or quiet quitting.  

Whilst the channel always needs to engage with their customers, during 2023, they will also need to review constantly how customers wish to engage with them.  They will need to collaborate with their customers through digital engagement to ensure they can easily upsell and cross sell services within their eco systems. 

Leverage new technologies technology and strategies to greater understand customers

Customer attitudes and expectations have also evolved. Many are looking for ways to transform and improve the efficiency and productivity of their organisations. They are looking to leverage cloud-based technology to break down the silos between departments and increase their overall efficiency and improve customer experience.  The fact that these technologies and their components are now far easier to access will drive many of the transformation initiatives in 2023.  

Channel providers will be focused on keeping hold of their customers.  Successful providers have always approached their customers with a consultative sale built on a keen understanding of their customer’s businesses. Going forward, this will be a vital requirement for everyone in the channel. 

The channel will also need to review their technologies in line with their customers’ expectations.  This will require regular reviews into how they package and add value to existing products and services in line with their core strengths and offerings across vertical markets or the size of enterprise. By understanding what their customers are buying today, they can check if their portfolio is still relevant and delivering growth or consider whether to augment services and create more value-add in line with those routes to market.  

The Impact of the changing physical landscape

The ISDN switch-off is going to transform the physical landscape. It has huge ramifications when you consider the number of services that still rely on analogue services such as alarms and lifts. To date, there’s been lots of talk but little action. It is going to drive a wave of new thinking and initiatives.  

New technologies have intensified competition

The intense competition in the market will force channel firms to search for differentiation. With the growth of virtual MSPs, where customers can buy wholesale services from almost anywhere, it is no longer good enough to have telecoms only services in a product portfolio.  Added to this, Microsoft Teams is now a service provider in their own right, so channel players must remain relevant to how people want to use services and Teams integration will be vital. 

With everything in the cloud, analytics is becoming critical to leveraging the intelligence within an organisation and delivering actionable insights. Services providers and telecos that have established analytics strategies will be well positioned to capitalise on the large addressable markets of customer experience, CCaaS and collaboration analytics, all segments that are benefitting from the shift to hybrid work and work from anywhere. 

In 2023, Tollring’s partners will use the capabilities of analytics to help them sell more and enhance their range of services by capturing information from across multiple cloud data sets such as Microsoft Teams, telephony, and CRM.  They can offer a fast and easy way for customers to access analytics across their product portfolios, and thus add value to the services they provide. The analytics is now easier to deploy, lower in cost and accessible to more people, providing intelligence whenever a decision needs to be made.