Adrian Gregory, EMEA President, Insight
My observation coming into this [VAR] world [Gregory joined Insight from Atos at the start of 2023] is that it’s probably the steadiest part of the market I’ve seen in terms of resource volumes and levels.
We haven’t had the same kind of layoffs or attritions. We’ve been in a pretty steady state, and in fact we’re growing in some areas – because we need to add solutions capability to the organisation. So we’re drawing from a different market as well – not just that traditional VAR market.
People like Microsoft have trailed where they want to focus their own direct teams and then what they want partners’ help on. They’ve made reductions in certain market segments, and then they’re asking partners to help go after that. What that’s meant for us is we can certainly recruit some of that expertise and experience to help in that area.
I think this is a whole lifecycle of fashion to be honest. I think vendors go through the lifecycle of ‘right, we must have direct relationships’, and then a few years later someone else comes in and goes, ‘well, no, we shouldn’t do that, let’s focus on partners’. It tends to ebb and flow and I’m sure it will ebb flow again in the future.
See Big Interview with Gregory here
Justin Harling, CEO, CAE Technology Services
We bought a number of people over, particularly from Dell as they were going through that layoff process. Initially, we could see the opportunity there. It’s put some great people in the market, and bringing those skills in even at that time felt like the right thing to do.
Our opinion on it has updated a bit since then, because we’re now seeing that this actually forms part of a structural change for some of these manufacturers. We’ve seen Dell then launching Partner First. Part of the thinking around Partner First is to encourage those resources to be held in the partner community. And I don’t think it’s just Dell. The value of the channel in terms of its reach, its customer intimacy and its ability to deliver services is being highly recognised by the manufacturers at this point, so it feels structural.
Are wage expectations a barrier to hiring vendor staff? They can be. There is an expectation that manufacturer roles can be higher paid, but I think that gap has narrowed and expectations are now more realistic. That’s what we saw in terms of being able to make [our vendor hires] work. It’s being conscious of that, and also being conscious of the cultural side. The working environment is noticeably different, so both parties have to go into that with their eyes open.
Andre Azevedo, CEO, Ancoris
We did pick up someone from Microsoft.
There were good people on the market that we leveraged, although not on a massive scale. There are a few people we hired as a result – we did benefit somewhat.
The broader effect is that the market cooldown has also created a lot more stability, both around hiring and retention.
As much as we have a really high retention rate, when the market is hot [staff] get lots of calls, and at some point someone will go. That’s the nature of having a hot market. Because the market is slightly cooler than it was – in technical but also in most roles – you get higher retention.
See Big Interview with Azevedo here
See next page for opinions of Constor’s Foiz Ahmed, Transputec’s Rickie Sehgal and Trustmarque’s Simon Williams
