Why transparency is important for distributors during a crisis

John Poulter, director at Comstor Australia tells CRN Australia how they are keeping their partners informed during the memory shortage.

As the memory shortage continues to impact every part of the Aussie IT channel, John Poulter, Comstor Australia Director believes transparency is key in times of crisis

Poulter leads the strategic and commercial direction of Comstor’s Australian division, working with vendors such as Cisco, Everpure and Splunk.

Speaking to CRN Australia, Poulter said, "Thinking about how you're going to navigate through the crisis and very clearly articulate that externally and internally in times like this,” he said.

“I believe what's of utmost importance is transparency with our partners, as well as with our suppliers or vendors.

"With things changing rapidly and a lot of uncertainty, I don't like to take the approach, which is that you try and muddle it all together without keeping people well informed and well briefed.”

Poulter explained how they are clear with their partners and customers.

“We are very transparent within Comstor, out to the market to tell them exactly what's going on, why it's happening a certain way, having open dialogue around how we solve this together with the partners,” he said.

“Once you get that alignment, things typically go as smooth as they possibly can, but having a well thought out plan of execution that mitigates risk or minimises disruption within the channel.”

A silver lining from this, Poulter said is the emergence of innovative ideas and solutions to these problems.

“This a big benefit to our partners that they can then take into their end customers as well,” he said.

“We try to be that steady hand within the ecosystem, for vendors, partners, from an operational and go-to-market perspective.”

Poulter expressed his enthusiasm to help his partners during this time of uncertainty.

“What I look forward to doing is doubling down and helping our partners navigate the uncertainty,” he said.

"That's where my team works really well, and as stressful as it can be, you build very strong relationships in times like this, when you choose to work together, and the relationships that you can forge.”

He noted that when organisations collaborate with the view to make everyone or each other successful, is when they start “forging strong relationships”.

“[That] turns into very strong, repeatable revenue streams longer term, that drive upside in profitability and customer satisfaction, stickiness, with the supply chain, from the end user all the way up into the vendor,” he said.

“Within challenging environments, there's always long-term opportunity. I'm excited to find out what those opportunities are and then work to Comstor into those areas that deliver us the edge, and our partners the edge.”

Memory shortage impact on Comstor

For Comstor, they too are being affected by the memory shortage. Poulter noted that his partners are being impacted but they’ve “been pretty good about it”.

“Some of them are perhaps a little shocked at some of the price increases that they've seen across all vendors when it comes to RAM but I find that there's been, at least in our experience, a very mature response to the ramageddon scenario,” he said.

Poulter said that the distie is finding they are making money and driving compute sales during this season.

“There are a lot of end users that know that they need to build out their operations, their clouds, their new projects for their end users,” he said.

"We're seeing a lot of ordering taking place, and our data centre business in particular has started to see a lot of growth.”

But, he noted that has come with some disruption around pricing.

“[This] is a well known thing in the market, and again, clear, open, honest transparency around the conversations of what's happening and why has been instrumental in keeping everyone at ease or as much as it is as they possibly can,” he said.