IT channel heavyweight Scott Frew has opened up on what motivates him as a serial entrepreneur, saying decades spent building businesses in the IT channel have taught him to “see opportunity everywhere”.
Frew is the CEO of iasset, a data-driven revenue automation platform he spun out of the third of three distributors he built and sold.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Frew argued that some of the channel’s biggest growth opportunities are already sitting inside existing customer accounts – but are routinely missed because organisations lack the visibility and processes to act on them (see more on his views here).
“When the economy’s good and everyone’s fat and happy, they’re not looking for change. But when economies start to shrink, that’s when people go, ‘what are we doing to fix the problem?’,” Frew said.
“Net new is the glamorous side, but I think there’s more money in the install base.”
“I realised I could see opportunity everywhere”
Having sold his first distributor, Micro Networks, in 1990, Frew repeated the trick a decade later with LAN Systems – which had grown to become APAC’s largest Cisco VAD.
After briefly stepping away from the industry following the sale of LAN Systems, Frew soon found himself drawn back by the prospect of building something new.
“I realised I can see opportunity everywhere… and it doesn’t even have to be IT.
“I literally walk around on a daily basis, thinking, ‘there’s an opportunity to change that’.”
That’s when Frew started his third distribution venture, Distribution Central, which he sold in 2016.
The idea for iasset was born while Frew was still running Distribution Central, after he spotted that 40% of the firewalls it was selling didn’t include maintenance. Revenue opportunities were being missed because there was no reliable way to identify and capture them.
That experience ultimately became the basis for iasset, with Frew recognising that businesses were leaving significant revenue on the table after the initial sale.
“The vast majority of resellers forget this”
“An average reseller is going to think of install base as ConnectWise or a PSA-type solution,” Frew said.
“This is actually about pure revenue. We will connect to those systems to keep your install base clean.
iasset connects data across systems including ERP, CRM and ITSM to give businesses a clearer picture of what’s installed, what customers own and what’s coming up for renewal or replacement.
Frew said iasset’s new AI function, InGRID, can scan vendor websites for end-of-life triggers and other changes affecting customers’ installed products. He cited a recent example where InGRID identified 612 end-of-life firewalls in a customer’s install base on behalf of a distributor.
“It was worth $20m or $21m – that’s the kind of impact it’s having,” Frew said.
But Frew argued that knowing what’s in the install base is only half the battle. The real value comes from having the automation to act on that information, turning identified opportunities into quotes and sales rather than relying on someone to pursue them manually.
Frew acknowledged that iasset won’t be required by “marketplace mature” or software-centric partners who have “usually built something internally”.
“But the vast majority of resellers are just trying to sell stuff – they forget about looking inwards to see how they could be more efficient,” he quickly added.
For Frew, the issue isn’t confined to resellers. He argued that disconnected systems and fragmented data can make it difficult for vendors, distributors and partners to maintain visibility over what’s been sold, where it’s deployed and where responsibility for the customer sits.
Although iasset counts EMEA as its largest market, UK partners can be slower to innovate than those in the US or Australia, Frew claimed.
“An Englishman thinks 100 miles is a long way, and an Australian thinks 100 years is a long time,” he said.
“That cultural difference means it is more difficult to get innovation to happen in some of these older UK-established businesses than it is for a US or Australian one.”
But Frew believes that reluctance to change will become harder to sustain as businesses face growing pressure to improve efficiency and profitability.
“The install base will sing”
Frew’s entrepreneurial interests have also taken him beyond the channel, including stints running a regenerative beef farm and organic brewery, but he said he now has no other “side gigs” as he doubles down on expanding iasset.
“The next goal is to get those three customers – vendor, distributor and reseller – all connected with three iasset instances,” Frew revealed.
“The install base will then sing between the three of them. No changes, no human error, no missed opportunities.”
This article was produced in association with iasset and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
