MARKET REPORT Purchasing
“Ultimately the guy that signs the cheque is the one that’s always done so. That person needs to
be onboard. But the buying cycle is still the buying cycle. Have they got the budget, have they got a
need and what is the timeframe?” Paul Burn, Purchasing Director, Nimans
COMMS BUSINESS LIVE
Who are you seeing making the purchasing decisions today?
Justin Blaine, Channel Manager at NTA – “I assist many resellers at
end-user meetings and it does depend on the size of the organisation.
With that SMB customer you could be selling to the Offi ce Manager or the
Managing Director.”
Paul Gibbs, Head of UCaaS and mid-market at Gamma – “It depends
on the size of the organisation, at sub 50 people it will be a product
champion or a designated expert within the business which has been
tasked with making the decision which can scare them a little at times.
As you go above that there is an IT manager, a CTO, an IT director and
they will make the decisions. Has that been responsible for the slightly
slower uptake (of hosted telephony) in the mid-market space? I think it
probably has.”
Ian Rowan, Channel Manager at Wildix UK – “Everyone can have an
infl uence in a company now. If they doing something at home they then
start to ask ‘why can’t I do this at work?’ Despite this you can’t forget
about the person that holds the cheque book.”
customers to adopt an
integrated decision-making
process whereby lines of
business are providing strong
technical input while senior
managers engaging with their
internal technical leaders, other
business stakeholders and their
suppliers to ensure that all of
the business considerations are
being evaluated and satis ed.
Leadership is inevitably
provided by these senior
managers but often they simply
do not have the technical
competencies required to make
these decisions in isolation.
Further, these decisions need to
be made as e ciently as possible
as it is not often the technical
stakeholders’ day job to evaluate
technology and propose
solutions.”
Lines of Business (LoB)
considerations
According to CompTIA, the
push towards digitization
and cloud computing has
empowered business execs to
research, choose and implement
their own solutions. In the
2018 7th State of the Channel
report, the research shows that
a tech-astute workforce is the
primary reason for business
units making at least some
of their technology purchase
decisions independent of the IT
department.
Estelle Johannes, director,
member communities,
CompTIA commented “Cloudbased
applications, which can
be self-provisioned quickly
within a department...are
mushrooming across marketing
departments and CFO o ces.
And it’s most likely that these
are the types of solutions that
individual business units pay for
out of their own budgets.”
Jay McBain, principal
analyst global channels at
Forrester agrees. He commented
recently “You’ve got VPs of
nance, operations, marketing,
sales and HR making the vast
majority of decisions today. Two
thirds of every tech or telco
decision today ows through
line of business, or they’re the
lead in uencer on that decision.
ey block internal processes,
and the internal IT department
a third of the time.”
ese are workers that “don’t
like the due diligence, don’t like
the delay, the bureaucracy”, says
McBain.
Burn commented “Lines of
business continues to evolve.
For example a recent UC
contract involved proof of
business who come out in your
favour the better, but often
those other departments are the
hardest to get in front of.”
In IDC’s latest Worldwide
Semiannual IT Spending
Guide: Line of Business, the
technology spending forecast
for line of business decision
makers suggests they will
overtake technology spending
by the IT department in this
year (2019).
Businesses spent $1.67
trillion on technology
(hardware, software, and
services) in 2018. Roughly half
of that spending (50.5%) came
from the IT budget while the
other half (49.5%) was from the
budgets of technology buyers
outside of IT.
LoB technology spending
has been growing at a faster rate
than IT spending for a number
of years. e compound annual
growth rate (CAGR) for LoB
spending over the 2016-2021
forecast period is forecast to be
6.9% compared to the 3.3%
CAGR for IT spending.
The buying process explained
With several factors to consider
when it comes to selling to
businesses your average reseller
must be mindful of how their
customers want to consume
their services and what the
>
concept where devices were put
out to all users, then a technical
sign o about how it worked
on the network, then how that
interlinked with the overall
framework and then it went to
the guy with the cheque book.
But ultimately if the overall
solution doesn’t quite match
budget constraints then the
solution would be tweaked
accordingly.”
Craig omas continued,
“Lines of business purchasing
decisions are increasingly
critical especially when
trying to add more value
and di erentiate your
solution in regards to major
communication investments.
Often IT departments and
purchasing are focused on
one or two speci c KPIs, cost
and return on investment in
particular. A CIO will have
their own agenda, speci cally
around security.
Bringing in other lines of
business can enable the decision
makers to understand and
evaluate a full range of needs,
as well as their initial perceived
needs. Adding bene ts to all
the other LoBs can support the
reseller pitch, through adding
value above and beyond the
initial needs you were originally
being benchmarked against.
Clearly, the more lines of
Paul Burn,
Purchasing
Director, Nimans
40 | Comms Business Magazine | August 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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