While there is plenty of opportunity for channel partners targeting the $50 billion SMB cloud services market, AMI-Partners' new study reveals their success will be based on five key competencies--yet only a fraction of channel partners are skilled in more than two of those competencies.
Among the High Value Competencies (HVC) for success that are inherent in every channel partner are business analytics, unified communication & collaboration, business process management, mobility and infrastructure alignment.
However, AMI's "U.S. SMB Partner Competencies Assessment" revealed that only 20 percent of the 72,000 partners that focus on the SMB market segment actually are skilled in two or more of these five high-value competencies.
"High-value competency (HVC) partners drive three times the market opportunity compared to other SMB partners," said Avinash Arun, Director of SMB Channels at AMI-Partners, "and the margins they derive from these key solutions are about 25 percent higher than other partners."
One of the common attributes among HVCs is that they have strong relationships with their SMB customers and an understanding of the vertical markets they serve, especially financial services and healthcare. With these relationships in hand, AMI argues that these channel partners are likely more committed to the cloud and are also three times as likely to experience success in the cloud.
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