The calendars have been turned to 2012 and with the holidays behind us, it’s time to roll up our sleeves for a new year. I’m sure we are all looking forward to a prosperous year.
Turning the calendar also means it is time for the annual round of predictions for the industry to surface. I’m working with members of our executive team right now as we polish our own Channel predictions for the year. As part of our upcoming webinar, we survey the landscape setting the stage for the Channel in 2012. These are the six elements that we feel will ground trends within the Channel this year:
- Economic recovery
- Mobile technology
- Social
- Cloud
- Data, and
- Consumerization
Watching the economic indicators and stock market on a daily basis is enough to give anyone vertigo these days. The reality is that economic recovery for the next year is uncertain although the last few weeks have been more encouraging than the rollercoaster of November and most of December. Forrester is predicting slow, but overall positive growth with Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America showing the highest growth rates and Western and Central Europe lagging the most. The channel impact will mean that most companies will plan for slow growth with longer sales cycles and budgets that may be contingent.
In 1949, Popular Mechanics indulged in a bit of prediction and hazarded a guess that “computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons.” What a shock the proliferation of mobile devices – many handheld – would have been! While mobile technology is affecting how we play, more profoundly, it affects how (and where) we work. Gartner estimates that smartphones will outnumber desktops and laptops – combined – in a mere two years (2014). The three verticals most heavily influenced by mobile technology right now are sales, healthcare, and education. And it’s the “sales” member of that trio that may be of interest for vendors in the Channel looking for innovative ways to work with their Channel. Your Partner sales teams are often engaging with customers where they can get the most traction – on site. And that means there are increased opportunities for partner engagement and communication using mobile technology.
One of my favorite bits of trivia making the rounds over the last few months concerns Facebook: if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world with a population somewhere around 500 million (China at 1.35 billion and India at 1.2 billion lead the way). The Channel has moved well beyond the question of “if” around Social and now vendors are more interested in “how” – to use Social. McKinsey reports businesses that maximize Social strategies enjoy a 24% higher revenue growth than less social businesses. Within the Channel, Social means that engagement shifts from thinking less about “Partners” and more about “individuals” – less about faceless, generic groups of companies selling your product, and more about the specific characteristics that make the persons on your Partners’ teams an important part of your extended sales efforts.
In 2001 Tom Siebel was talking about Salesforce.com and suggested “there’s no way that company exists in a year.” Another example of a crystal ball that probably needed a refurbishing. Cloud computing is driving a paradigm shift that is seen by many to be as pervasive as the introduction of the Internet. Estimates on growth vary, but all are aggressive with the global cloud computing market predicted to be somewhere around $150-160 billion by 2013 and as much as $240 billion by 2020 (Forrester, Gartner, Merrill Lynch). The Cloud is driving a huge shift in the Channel as Partners and Vendors alike are working to adapt to a recurring revenue model of business.
The proliferation of data raises a whole host of issues for the industry from security to MDM. Bill Gates had no idea that storage conversations would graduate so quickly to terabytes, petabytes, and zettabytes in 1981 when he said “640k ought to be enough for anybody.” Forrester estimates the growth of data at 800% in just the last five years and IBM believes that business email is growing 25-30% annually (no trouble believing that prediction!). One of the key issues with all this data is that it provides no insight if it is unorganized. Channel Management teams struggle to evaluate the success of their individual programs, communications, campaigns, etc. because they often have too much data and too little insight into what it really means. 2012 should see a greater commitment to analytics in the Channel and integration of programs to yield a “single source of truth” to facilitate program adjustments and maximize Channel investments.
Technology innovation used to flow from the enterprise to the consumer market. That has reversed dramatically in the last few years as the consumer market has become the wellspring for innovation. Today 45% of employees feel their personal computing devices and applications are better than what their IT departments provide. Contrast that with the much smaller 27% of executives who have a clear strategic vision for employee adoption of consumer technologies (Accenture). Employees also expect the same user experience in business that they enjoy using their own technology – from the shopping cart and reviews characteristic of an online experience like Amazon, to the “any time, any where” availability of information. The impact of consumerization on the Channel is Partners are often looking for a similar easy-to-use experience when interacting with Vendors that they get when they use technology in their private lives.
What trends do you see populating this Channel “landscape”? You can join me and our executive team on the 11th by clicking here to find out which trends we’ll be watching this next year.
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