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Executive Address
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Peel Children’s Aid
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TechSelect Member Profile
from Toronto, Ontario
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Showing support for United Way
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What’s Your One Thing?
Comments, suggestions? Tell us what you think! jillian.cahill@techdata.ca
Making a difference in our community Helping childrens’ holiday wishes come true We catch up with 365 IT SOLUTIONS
Raising close to $30,000 for families in need
Take your value proposition from weak to peak
Editor Jillian Cahill Art Direction and Design Julie MacAulay Contributing Writers and Editors Irene Buchan, Jillian Cahill, Mary Bonnici, Tracy Blalock Project Manager Monisha Sharma Tech Times is published and distributed six times per year to channel resellers across Canada. ©2016 Tech Data Canada Corporation. Prices, promotions, offers & terms and conditions of sale subject to change without notice. Errors and omissions excepted. All manufacturers’ names are registered trademarks of their respective corporations. This publication comes to you free from Tech Data Canada Corporation. We received your mailing address from your Tech Data customer account information. To make changes or to unsubscribe, please contact your Tech Data sales team at 800.668.5588 or notify us at emailcanada@techdata.ca. www.techtimesmagazine.ca
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ExecutiveAddress
Making a Difference in our Community Dear Valued Partners, Happy New Year!
As 2015 comes to a close with the holiday season, I’ve had the chance to reflect on some of the great ways Tech Data Canada brought joy to several local charities throughout our community. We take great pride in assisting those in need throughout the year. Over the years, it has become an integral part of who we are at Tech Data Canada, helping us to further demonstrate our ability to come together as an organization and help find solutions for others. Most recently, our employees had the opportunity to take on the role of Santa Claus! Tech Data Canada is a proud supporter of the Peel Children’s Aid Foundation’s Holiday Wishes Program, providing children and youth living with abuse, neglect and poverty the chance to take part in the special season and surround themselves with hope and happiness. I am overjoyed with the generosity of our employees who gave 12 families including 26 children a happier holiday season! Our lobby was full of bags brimming with toys, clothing, and other necessities on each family’s wish list. I would also like to make special mention to Lenovo Canada who donated $50 food voucher gift cards to each of the families. This really was the season of giving and we are proud to play a role in bringing joy to the faces of all of these children in our community.
alongside children and youth with disabilities, creating transformative experiences of belonging. Tech Data Canada recognizes that our support and personal involvement in the community in which we live and work is of vital importance and we are a proud supporter of Reach for the Rainbow Annual Crystal Ball. We’ve collected boxes of clothing to help Syrian families resettling in Toronto in December and were extremely proud to have a soccer squad of 12 employees join the Holland Bloorview Soccer Challenge in September with proceeds supporting the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. Through the generosity of our employees throughout 2015, we helped bring happiness to so many individuals in our own community. I am proud of our organization and everyone’s efforts to come together to make a difference. On behalf of the entire Tech Data Canada organization, I’d like to wish all of our partners a healthy and prosperous year ahead!
Sincerely,
Rick Reid President Sales and Marketing
Each year, our employees also come together to help generously support the United Way in the Peel Region. Every program and agency supported by the United Way improves social conditions in the region to ensure that each resident can not only survive, but thrive. The United Way works within the community to improve the lives of individuals and families, strengthen neighbourhoods, and make our community better for everyone. With Tech Data Canada’s United Way campaign each year, we aim to over achieve our previous years’ donations. I am delighted to say that we did that this year with employee pledges, an online auction and monthly donations bringing our total raised to an outstanding $29,300! Reach for the Rainbow provides integrated recreation, respite and outreach opportunities designed to engage the hearts and minds of all individuals. Its programs encourage environments for typical children and individuals to live, play, work and inspire themselves
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Peel Children’s Aid Making children’s holiday wishes come true
Tech Data employees played Santa this holiday season! This past December, Tech Data’s halls on Creditview Road were decked with extra holiday cheer. Employees from all departments came together to ensure children living with abuse, neglect and poverty had a chance at a very happy holiday. Tech Data is a proud supporter of the Peel Children’s Aid Foundation’s Holiday Wishes Program. Every year, employees generously sponsor children and families by providing toys, books, clothing, gift cards and items from the holiday wish list of impoverished families With fewer families in need than previous years, Tech Data gave 12 families and 26 children wonderful holiday memories! A big thank you to all those that participated and Lenovo Canada who generously donated $50 food voucher holiday gift cards to each of the families.
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In this issue of Tech Times, we catch up with 365 IT SOLUTIONS to find out how TechSelect membership has helped them make connections and accelerate their business.
Tell us a little about your organization: 365 IT SOLUTIONS was established in Toronto in 2003 and transitioned from a retail outlet to a B2B service company and now to a leading boutique IT consulting firm. We deliver industryleading services including Managed IT, IT Support, IT Outsourcing, Tech Support and Cloud. As a proud Canadian firm, we specialize in working within the healthcare, construction, manufacturing and nonprofit industries. We have developed a unique and collaborative corporate culture focusing on building a team of goal-oriented, problemsolvers, who are also creative forward thinkers. Our team has unparalleled grit and passion for what we do. We aim to deliver our best, every time. Q: What challenges are you facing and how do you overcome them? The past couple of years have been dedicated to reinventing 365 iT SOLUTIONS and building a strong foundation. As we move forward, the biggest challenge we face is to develop unique solutions that address realworld business problems. By opening all lines of communications with clients, we have the ability to work in real world environments using the latest technology. Q: What would you like to see from vendor partners? More of the same. When we are in need of advice and support, vendor partners have consistently helped us by removing as much red tape as possible. Vendors have also done a good job of educating us of any changes or new products well in advance. Our strong relationships with these vendors allow us to strategically work lean while keeping agile in the marketplace. Vendors are welcome to engage us for product development insights, strategies and opinions that affect our business and clients. Managed services is all about standardization and changing vendors or products is not always an easy transition, that is why it is important to work collaboratively with vendors.
Razmig Sagharian, director of 365 iT Solutions leads a driven team focused on unique solutions and open dialogue.
Having a selected vendor portfolio and loyalty going both ways is very important for success. Q: What are your organization’s goals for the next five years? We will continue to fulfill our growth strategy as a unique IT consulting firm in Toronto. We will strengthen our market presence by executing investments into our infrastructure and double our team. We will also be actively working to identify opportunities with a high probability for success including growing our core business, growing by market segmentation and growing based on adjacent opportunities using vendor partner programs. Down the road we will also possibly be looking at acquisition opportunities to further increase our market share and enter new markets. Q: How has the TechSelect program helped you? Or helped you meet your organization’s goals? TechSelect has been an amazing experience for all members of 365 iT SOLUTIONS. It has given us the ability to work with the best in the industry and the ability to benchmark against
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successful organizations. TechSelect gives us access to exclusive products, services and opportunities to further our business development and brand. TechSelect has helped take 365 iT SOLUTIONS to the next level by connecting us with the right people, technologies, vendors, programs and resources. This has allowed us to grow our business and make better business decisions. In the future, we are looking to help future TechSelect members achieve business success the same way we have benefited from our TechSelect peers. Q: What is your outlook for 2016. We expect 2016 to be an explosive year as many new products and services are about to launch in Canada. We have several large strategic plans in play and are waiting for certain services to launch officially in order to execute. We will continue our effective sales and marketing strategy and gain more specific market share and will deploy more cost-effective solutions compared to other players in the game while maintaining healthy profit margins.
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Showing support for United Way Raising close to $30,000 for families in need
Each year, Tech Data Canada comes together to help support United Way, Peel Region. In 2014, almost $17,000 made its way into the Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga areas thanks to the generosity of our employees. Tech Data Canada is very proud of our United Way track record but this year we rolled up our sleeves and committed to surpassing this amount. We are happy to announce that through several initiatives which included employee pledges, an online auction and monthly donations we raised
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$29,300!
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Through these generous employee donations we helped make a lasting difference in our community and impact in the lives of those most in need. 220,000 people in Peel Region live in poverty – 45% of these neighbourhoods are considered low-or very low income. However, even complex problems have solutions. Change starts when we work together.
A big thank you to all those that worked together to hit this goal!
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Take it from Curly In the 1991 movie, City Slickers, Curly (played by Jack Palance) tells Mitch (played by Billy Crystal) about the secret of life—sticking to that one thing—and that without it nothing else matters. Turns out, Curly was really onto something. The start of something special With today’s hyper-competitive landscape, you need to make it crystal clear to prospects why they should buy from you—and only you. Your value proposition is the foundation for connecting with target customers, plus it’s the fuel for all of your sales and marketing activities. It’s a promise to potential customers of the outcomes you’ll help them realize better than anyone else. A successful value proposition: • Promises to solve a specific problem or accomplish a specific goal that buyers see as a priority • Clearly describes how prospective buyers benefit from your solution • Helps buyers see themselves eliminating the challenge—think pain versus gain • Identifies quantifiable outcomes buyers can expect as a result of your solution • Demonstrates you know what buyers are trying to accomplish and where alternatives fall short 14
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The anatomy of a great value proposition
So how do you know when you’ve hit the jackpot? Effective value proposition share these characteristics. Distinctive When you focus on everything your business offers, you say nothing. Your mission is to find out which benefit is most valuable to your customers. Build your value proposition on points of difference—but always keep your target prospect in mind. Some will be more important than others and some will only be important to certain customer segments. Measurable Your value proposition must deliver quantifiable outcomes that give buyers good reason to act now. Promoting things like good customer service falls flat. Who doesn’t claim that? To truly drive preference, you need to communicate strategic benefits— like doubling storage capacity without adding cost or migrating users in half the time. In fact, Marketing Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board research found that benefits that showed customers how to do something better than how they do it today were proven to be four times more powerful predictors of preference.1 Defendable Buyers want to minimize risk and look for evidence to support your claims. One way to build instant credibility is to cite statistics that tell prospects specifically how much you’ll improve their situation. Rather than just say you help them save money—if you’ve saved customers $525,000 a year on average, say so. Instead of saying you help them speed up deployment, tell them they’ll
reduce the time to deploy from one week to two hours. Real numbers makes it believable and compelling.
you’re so close to your business. Everything about a value proposition should be focused around your customers.
How to create a powerful value proposition Use these questions to get the ball rolling as you create a compelling value proposition.
Tell a story According to B2B technology marketer Gordana Stik, effective value propositions tell a story that consists of two parts—the hook and the how4. The hook shows you understand your customer’s goals, obstacles to achieving them and can deliver measurable results. The how specifies how you help them get there in a way they won’t find anywhere else.
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Why do people buy from our company?
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What outcome and value are they seeking?
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What are we doing to meet their expectations? What are we not doing?
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What are the customer’s true pain points or problems?
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What is our area of specialization and excellence? Do customers recognize this?
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How do customers think and talk about our business?
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What must they be convinced of to start buying from us?
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What can we share to cause customers to say, “I’d have to be crazy to do business with someone else”?
Rather than just say you help them save money—if you’ve saved customers $525,000 a year on average, say so.
Be careful not to rely solely on internal perspectives. According to the Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board, the biggest failure point in most company value propositions is proximity. It’s hard to be objective when
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Translating your value proposition into powerful marketing messages Social Media and Content Strategist Melina Emerson stresses the importance of making your value proposition clear in all of your sales and marketing copy. Your special value should be clear to every visitor to your website and social media pages. Melina also suggests taking every opportunity to let testimonials tell your story. Whether you’ve never taken the time to hammer out a concise value proposition, or you have one that needs some fine-tuning, it helps to have roadmap that walks you through the process. Leverage these success tips to drive more confidence and conversions in no time. Sources 1Three
B2B Value-Proposition Rules That Create Preference, Not Just Parity by Tim Riesterer March 30, 2010; Marketing Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), authors of the survey 2Thought Leadership Publications and Forums, Posted April 26, 2012 4 Steps to Make Your B2B Value Proposition More Compelling 3Three Questions You Need to Ask About Your Brand, Kevin Lane Keller, Brian Sternthal and Alice M. Tybout, September 2002 4http://contentbridge.ca/10-steps-to-crafting-acustomer-focused-value-proposition/ 57 ways to increase your value propositions by Melinda Emerson, Social Media and Content Strategist, Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author, Aug. 2014
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Tech Data Canada wins Fortinet Distributor of the Year award
Oliver Voss and Khurram Haider of Tech Data accept 2015 Canadian Distribution Partner of the Year award at Fortinet Global Partner Conference.
We are honoured to announce that Tech Data Canada has recently been recognized as Canadian Distribution Partner of the Year by our valued partner, Fortinet. Fortinet’s top partner awards recognizing the outstanding achievements drawn from the company’s distributors and resellers around the world were distributed at their annual Global Partner Conference that took place in Cancun, Mexico. This award is a reflection of the strong partnership, commitment and expertise that our dedicated team provides all of our Fortinet channel partners to enable them to accelerate their business. Thank you Fortinet for this exciting recognition!
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