Introduction to Cloud Distributors and Resellers
Cloud computing has enabled organizations to scale, stay flexible, be resilient and focus on the business they do, rather than go into the complexities of IT infrastructure. Cloud services providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft etc. sell cloud services and cloud-based products.
Distributors partner with the service providers to give out cloud services and products to the customers. A service provider or the reseller purchases cloud services and cloud-based products from the cloud distributors and further sells them.
Cloud distributors can have two types of resellers or partners:
- One is the commission-based category of partners who refer the services of the distributor to a third party and gets a commission if the sale occurs. The post-sale customer relationship is handled by the distributor only.
- Another category is the discount based in which the partner white labels the services of the distributor and sells them to the customer and maintains post-sales customer relationships.
Challenges faced by the cloud service providers
As the web is developing, more and more organizations are becoming cloud-based owing to the multiple benefits it offers. While this gives immense opportunities to the resellers to grow their business, end-to-end customer management becomes difficult for the resellers/service providers. Cloud distributors can manage their reseller network well as they understand the business challenges that the partners face:
- Confusion associated with building products per the customer or the technology: While partners are evolving to dynamic customer needs of today, cloud vendors are introducing new tools and technologies. It’s a challenge to design your solutions on a foundation that’s evolving day by day.
- Increased competition and less budget for Go-To-Market activities: For service providers or resellers, with rising costs, there is not much margin and hence, less profitability, so they try to find effective ways to reduce costs associated with customer acquisition. But less marketing budget and increased competition can become a bottleneck for growth.
- Managing business with increasing complexities: Since the tech stack is always changing, service providers need to update their plans, pricing and billing accordingly from time to time. Not all resellers always have a fully trained team to help them manage all operations, business nuances, while managing the software sales cycle and customer needs, as per the business demands.
A cloud distributor like ZNet Technologies has the depth of expertise and breadth of resources to help you in your cloud reselling journey. Being a service provider in the past, we understand the challenges that you face and thus to support your technical, operational and business needs, we designed RackNap.
RackNap as a multi-tier partner management software can allow cloud distributors to add and relieve partners and resellers, automate partner programs, view partner and reseller performance, manage cloud solutions for providing a great customer experience and much more.
RackNap for Cloud Distributors
RackNap is a platform for cloud distributors to resell cloud solutions through partners. The distributors can leverage their partner and reseller network to provision, bill and deliver cloud solutions to the end consumers. RackNap’s multi-tier partner channel management helps distributors leverage partner networks to drive in more sales. By automating the entire partner lifecycle, RackNap helps manage multiple partner channels. Partners can leverage RackNap to manage and sell services to their customers too.
RackNap’s partner management module empowers distributors to create and manage any number of partner channels to sell their services. It is flexible and advanced and can handle the complexity of any type of partner model. With it, the cloud distributors can drive revenue by advertising their cloud services on a white-labelled, easy-to-use marketplace that is also SEO-friendly. It enables partners to discover distributors, make a purchase, and launch the cloud services they need. With it, distributors can easily onboard partners with a simple signup process through their website.
How RackNap can help simplify end-to-end partner management
- RackNap has a powerful admin management portal for distributors with administration capabilities. It allows them to edit their portfolio of cloud services, control pricing, promotions, manage partner and customer accounts, and review billing and invoicing all from a single page.
- RackNap allows the partners to easily manage the cloud solutions which they are selling from the distributors. It gives the partners a platform to set up and manage their brand settings, sell products, offer services, manage customer relationships. It also enables partners to do billing & pricing, invoicing, taxes for their end-customers from their partner panel.
- RackNap empowers the end-users of services with a powerful customer self-service panel. It is a simple-to-use customer self-service panel that enables the users to manage their relationship with their service providers.
- RackNap’s multi-tier partner channel management enables distributors to create multiple partner types, set lock-in periods for partners, easily add existing customers as partners, define partner type and assign discounts and commission based on that, create customizable workflow rules and features.
- RackNap allows distributors to give complete visibility and control in the hands of their partners. This enables the partners to view their commissions, products sold, current slab, request a special discount, manage end customers, handle support, place orders for their customers too.
- By acting as an efficient reporting tool, RackNap gives distributors a complete insight into partner activities track their partners’ activities and track their performance in real-time. It allows the distributors to view the sales and revenue of their partners and also evaluate partner performance using various filters and parameters.
