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In today’s hyper-competitive market, you can gain success by developing solution sales that provide unique value to customers. It might sound obvious. But more businesses could – and should – be making more effort to differentiate themselves.
What’s less obvious, perhaps, is that partners can embed intelligent technology into their products and services to deliver more value and use data as a strategic asset to enter new markets. It’s all part of digital transformation – and we’ve been looking at Microsoft’s latest series of eBooks, featuring research by the International Data Corporation (IDC), to learn more…
Although partners today offer a range of services, they tend to specialise in a set of core capabilities such as software development, consulting/professional services, or cloud/managed services. How your business can differentiate itself is critical, and IP can be the answer.
Chances are, there’s code, processes or methodologies involved in what you already do. You may not correlate those with your proven capabilities, but that is your IP. Use it. Offer something that provides a customer with a better outcome for their business. And protect that offering, to stop others from duplicating it.
According to the IDC, by 2020, 60% of all enterprises will have fully articulated an organisation-wide digital platform strategy. This is your opportunity to use your consulting and professional services to define and execute on customer roadmaps for digital transformation.
As part of the same research, it is estimated that by 2021, spending on cloud services and cloud-enabling hardware, software and services will more than double to over $530 billion. Your cloud and managed services will play a key role in supporting customer cloud initiatives and ongoing integrations with a host of applications.
In addition, by 2021, enterprise apps will shift toward hyper-agile architectures, with 80% of application development on cloud platforms (PaaS) using microservices and cloud functions. This is your chance to use your development capabilities to take advantage of customer demand for custom and packaged software.
When weighing up IP development, your choices are to develop it yourself based on in-house expertise, purchase a company that has already developed some or all of the expertise, or partner with another company.
However, it’s worth considering that you could be sitting on a treasure trove of IP that was previously customised for specific clients. And there may be value there that can be leveraged for other clients, which requires minimal effort compared to inventing something new. What you’re ultimately moving towards is faster delivery of repeatable value, which will drive higher profitability.
Why not think about documenting and packaging a project-based consulting process, for example, that can be sold again and again to similar clients or for similar workloads? Or consider things you do that can be developed into a repeatable motion, and leverage those as billable services?
IDC indicates that partners who have digitally transformed expect double-digit growth (27%) in their revenue related to their IP (i.e., packaged software, managed/ cloud services, consulting/pro services, support services) in the next two years, versus traditional partners who have not begun their own digital transformation – do you want to get in on the action?
At Westcoast, we’re experts at helping businesses use a step-wise approach to develop an offering. We can guide you through the processes and help you deliver a great product by connecting your deep knowledge of your customer’s business, with your expertise in vertical industries – so get in touch today…
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