Customer expectations are forcing partners to collaborate

The COVID-19 disruption required businesses to rethink how the relationship between partners and distributors can deliver the best value for customers.

CRN spoke with Shah Hardik, co-founder and CEO of TechFlow services, on how the relationship has evolved over the past 18 months.

“There’s many projects that we need to deliver where we don’t have enough capability, where we will be heavily relying on those partners to bring in skills, bring in the right people and address needs brought by the customer,” says Hardik.

“Being partners and having done it for a number of years now, we know what we can do, we know what they need. We know what we can find so we know when to look for stock we know where to look for price. We work with the vendors, if we need to, in terms of special pricings and special projects and that's easy.”

According to Hardik, the difficulty of this process lies in finding who to contact to find alternatives, such as renders, a process that is made easier due to the assistance and relationship with their distribution partners.

Customer expectations remain high, despite COVID, and distributors play an important part in ensuring the quality of the relationship and the service levels are maintained.

Hardik believes that distributors have done well in the last 12 months, playing a large role not just in procurement, but in business partnership.

“The customer expectations in the market are not going away. The customers are still going to expect the same level of service even after COVID,” Hardik says.

“They are still going to expect the same speed of service, the same access to information, and I think what the last 12 months has done is they have forced everyone to evolve with that, now some have, and some haven't.”