More channel partners are setting up an ‘Office of the CTO’ because customers “don’t want people to sell them stuff anymore”, and are craving a more joined-up, consultative approach.
That’s according to Matt Hudson, who was in May appointed to head up Ultima Business Solutions’ newly established Office of the CTO function.
Ultima is just the latest in a growing line of channel partners to set up a similar function, with CDW also doing so recently and Softcat‘s Office of the CTO – or ‘OCTO’ as it calls it, regularly commenting on tech market trends.
“I’m aware of a few [other partners that have done this],” newly appointed Ultima CTO Hudson said, when asked whether it constitutes a trend.
“You mentioned CDW, and that’s one that was happening pretty much at the same time as us. I suspect their journey has been very similar. Customers don’t want people to sell them stuff anymore.
“Most conversations I have with customers are all around solving problems and putting together solutions.”
What is an Office of the CTO?
So what is an ‘Office of the CTO’, and should every MSP or reseller have one?
For Ultima, a £120m-revenue, Reading-based partner that ranked 42nd in the recent Oxygen 250, it’s an “integrated office” encompassing technical, pre-sales, sales specialists, vendor alliances, bids and public sector initiatives.
This means customers understand who to engage with for specific parts of their strategy “right up front”, Hudson explained.
The increasing complexity of technology meant the case for creating an official office capable of guiding customers’ overall tech strategy made “more and more sense”, Hudson said.
“It’s not about going in there to sell a laptop to the customer. We’re going in there to solve challenges – and they are very broad now with how complex technology is,” he said.
“Ten years ago you were speaking to one stakeholder inside a business. When you’re working with a business now you’re speaking to 10-15 stakeholders. You’re talking to procurement, CISOs, CIOs, architecture teams, security teams, SOC, and you’re talking to third parties as well.”
Are all Offices of the CTO the same?
Interviewed recently by channel recruiter Marc Sumner, CDW’s Head of the Office of the CTO, Kyle Davies, said his role was partly about being accountable for the reseller’s voice to market, as well as proposition development.
“There’s a few of us out there that have this job title now,” he noted (see below).
Ultima marketing director Ewa Johnson felt that not all partners have the same spin on the concept, however.
“I’m ex Softcat and at Softcat there was an Office of the CTO that we called ‘OCTO’,” she said.
“They acted more as thought leaders, opinion formers and headline grabbers. That is one way to go, and very valuable.
“But I think the difference here is one that’s between a sales-led organisation and perhaps a technical expertise-led organisation. We’re very much the latter.”
Hudson, meanwhile, questioned whether smaller or more niche MSPs and IT solutions providers would have the array of skills needed to follow suit.
“If you’re calling it a trend, it’s going to be for those people who are able to give customers that breadth,” he said.
“Some suppliers or MSPs won’t have that breadth of knowledge, and that consultancy function, to allow them to do this.
“We’ve done a lot of this stuff for a long time, it’s just we haven’t called it this and joined up every piece of our business to make sure it points in the same direction.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
