34 01732 759725 INTERVIEW AI is coming into play, as we are all very aware, and cyber is growing because of that. There’s a lot of vulnerability being created due to AI and the speed at which their products are being developed. “We’ve got to remain relevant, and we do that by keeping up with what is coming in from a product point of view, by making sure we enable partners quicker and more efficiently, and by providing knowledge around where the focus lines are, because there’ll be lots and lots of AI security-type products, but are they going to be relevant today and are they going to be relevant in five years’ time? “We’ve got to be agile and keep offering those value layers. That’s where distribution needs to be a lot slicker than it perhaps has been traditionally. Not us, of course. We’ll continue to be as young and agile and positive and upbeat as possible.” Roberts adds that an important part of Distology’s value layer is being a reliable information source that resellers can refer to and turn to for assistance when exploring the development of their own product offering. “If they decide to take on new product areas, who can they turn to for help with pre-sale POV setups or their deployment or shaping a strategy for getting the product to their customer base. We do both 2.0 and 3.0 marketing and help our resellers with events and so on, and also lead generation. We have an in-house SDR service, SDR as a service, which has got a huge amount of interest. “A lot of our vendors have leant on us for that, to reinvigorate leads and to create new opportunities that we can take to partners. That’s almost a retro thing that has come back. With the dawn of GDPR, everyone got very scared and ran away from the end user lead generation distribution layer. We have reinvigorated that, and it’s really taking off.” As Distology embarks on a new chapter with the backing of Foresight, how would Roberts like the company to be viewed in five years’ time? “As a true European distributor, and not just as a distie for the sake of being a distie, just doing the configuration and quoting and credit checking. I’d like us to be seen as one that’s making a difference and helping the go-to-market for some really cool technology in the areas we sit in and where we are experts. I’d like the Distology name and the brand to be synonymous with true value and support and assistance and quality in that go to market.” www.distology.com frightening concept for us. But we’re not. We are more about high growth products, coming to market and generating a new, or developing a better, channel business. We sit earlier in the adoption cycle and the adoption curve than a lot of the volume players, so we’re not worried about the platforms.” So, Distology has no plans to develop a marketplace of its own? “One hundred per cent not,” says Roberts. “There isn’t the volume where we sit, so it doesn’t make sense for us. We could spend a lot of time and money trying to develop something that will never, ever commercially pay dividends. It will never provide the ROI that’s needed. You can probably off the shelf it anyway, but there is no point. That’s not who we are. “What we will do, of course, is use AI to create a lot better information-gathering tools and platforms to share with our partners, as well as internal efficiency projects, so that if we double the business we don’t have to double the headcount, while still having a very human, valuecentric layer on top of that efficiency.” Staying agile Value and agility are words that come up often when Roberts discusses Distology’s strengths and the requirements for success in today’s market. “Gone are the days of having a warehousing and just credit checking,” she says. “Distribution today needs to be a lot more than that. It’s super-important that we consistently evolve to provide value to reseller partners who are flying blind a lot of the time in a very fast-paced market. “This isn’t a case of Distology being a bigger European brand just for the sake of it, but because there’s an opportunity cost to not doing it. We’re attracting vendors who want to come in and have one distributor for Europe, and they want the quality to be consistent. Rather than having a boutique distributor in one country and a broadliner in another, they want to have a high-quality value-add distributor across the main markets in Europe. That’s why we’re doing it. It gives us the opportunity to show our value creation across other countries as well and not just grow our domestic market, which, of course, is what we’re aiming to do too.” Acquisitions will play a part in this, starting in Germany, the site of Distology’s only one to date, that of Squareball in 2022, and where there is the greatest potential for extending the vendor relationships it has in other regions. “I had my new board director in today, and I was saying I desperately want to do this. So that’s the first thing we’re going to do,” says Roberts. “I love challenging the norm and going out there and stretching our comfort zone.” Changing market Back on home soil, what does Roberts think are some the key developments in the distribution sector and how are they impacting Distology and its customers? “In the last five years, of course, you’ve got the platforms, the hyperscalers. You’ve got Amazon and Google and everybody trying to volumise in the layer where distribution sits. If we were a volume-driven business, that would be a ...continued
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=