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Westcon-Comstor driving data-sharing strategy
The distributor’s recently appointed digital sales leader shares his ambitions for the year ahead, and the importance of passing insights to partners
Westcon-Comstor has been driving a strategy that views sharing data as a fundamental spur to growth, and recently shuffled its management team to support those efforts.
Towards the end of last year, the distributor appointed Russell Blackburn, who had been working on the Comstor side of the distributor’s business, to a newly created position of senior vice-president of digital sales, with a brief to accelerate the adoption of the channel player’s PartnerCentral marketplace.
He steps into the role at a moment when the distributor has already established an offering that is used by many partners keen to gain insights into their trading and opportunities, but is keen to evolve that further.
“David Grant [Westcon-Comstor CEO] has made some investments in platforms, because we really believe we’ve got to evolve how we engage with our partners and our vendors,” said Blackburn.
He added that PartnerCentral was one of the results of those efforts, and that he was given the chance to drive it forward.
“I’m delighted to be able to pick that up, and try and use some of my experience that I’ve had with vendor engagements, partner engagements and running sales teams as we evolve this digital engagement,” said Blackburn.
“Digital engagement is about supporting our vendors, our sales teams and our partners,” he said. “It should all be aligned, and presenting data to our sales teams is as valuable as presenting the data to our partners directly. We’ve got to fashion that in a way that allows them to execute on it appropriately.”
Sharing insights
Blackburn said the distributor recognised that a lot of the data flowing through its business could be of value to partners and vendors. “We share with our partners to help them deliver their business,” he said. “If we hold that back, how are we going to help our partners grow? A part of delivering that is through the platforms like PartnerCentral.”
Blackburn added that some of the information that was available via its Data Insights offering was expected details of trading, but it was going further to highlight where customers were planning to invest.
“We can start providing information around what’s happening in the market as well,” he said. “We can take a broad view of this, and if they’re in a particular segment, we can start advising them around what opportunities exist in that segment.
“We have access to very significant data that shows what’s happening at the end user, so we can see what they’re buying, what segments they’re in when refresh is due, and we’re able to provide our partners, as long as it’s their end user with already-existing engagement, that information to be able to go and have a valuable conversation with that end user,” said Blackburn.
He said partners were increasingly engaging with the data insights, and that it had seen increasing numbers using the service, and his brief was to accelerate that engagement and continue to develop the offering.
Blackburn added that one of his areas of focus just a few weeks into the role was to ensure the right data was getting through to the right partner, and automation was used to support that process.
“We don’t want to flood all of our teams with data, because they just won’t be able to cope with it,” he said. “You’ve got to pick your particular partner, particular vendor, or particular segment and display that in a way that they can act on. They can go and have a valuable conversation with our partners.”
Delivering growth
Blackburn added that vendors were also looking to distribution to manage significant numbers of partners and deliver the growth they were looking for.
“The principle is efficiency, value to our partners, value to our sales teams, and value to our vendors,” he said. “If we’re delivering all of those, our partner business should grow, and then we would expect our business to grow on the back of that.”
Blackburn said he had been listening to partners, discovering their thoughts about areas where the digital services could be developed, and ideas have already come out of those conversations about further innovation.
“My preparation has been to enter our new financial year, 1 March, with a clear set of guidelines and strategy for the business and my team around what we’re going to do and what we’re going to aim for,” he said.
“And, you know, it’s a different role from what I was doing,” said Blackburn. “But I feel like I’m in a place where I can take the experience I’ve had in those other roles into how we help evolve our engagement with our partners.”
