Last month’s Channel Forecast insight session gauged the business outlooks of three channel firms, assessing H1 company performance, their take on market trends, growth hotspots, the shift towards outcomes versus simple reselling, the channel engagement strategies that work best and what this all means for resellers and MSPs in H2 and beyond.
There’s plenty of scope for optimism in the coming six months, according to our panel of three industry experts, each reporting good growth, and all preparing for an H2 uptick. “We’ve had a strong first half of the year, measuring growth across most of our products and technologies with clear momentum in all the right areas compared to 2024,” said Ralph Mora, VP & GM EMEA Region, Nuso. “We are doing especially well where cloud adoption is maturing and have had a bright spot in integrating Microsoft Teams and Zoom Phone into our business telephony suite. We’re still building out this ecosystem so that partners can grow through a broader reach with richer solutions.”
Despite a slower first quarter, Evolve IP has also seen growth pick up with record attendees at its April partner day. It is also planning an H2 spike by doubling down on its Microsoft play via the impending launch of Operator Connect. “We’ve built an ecosystem around the Microsoft piece with call recording, analytics and contact centre,” said Sales Director Jamie Hughes.
He also highlighted churn from smaller customers as another trend to keep an eye on. “This doesn’t have to be a negative, larger customers are stickier and one or two deals can make up for churn,” he said. “Our strategy is to point customers at the mid-market and enterprise space and avoid the low-end which can be a race to the bottom.”
VeloxServ has also driven year-on-year growth, according to Head of Marketing Rob Tickle, having ramped up its connectivity offering and signing up a raft of new suppliers. He said that VeloxServ’s priority is to go all-in on marketing and partner enablement to add new resellers and deepen its relationship with existing partners. “The goal is around equipping our ISP and MSP partners with the right data, insight collateral and all the tools they need to be able to sell their value-added solutions confidently and differentiate themselves,” he said, noting that VeloxServ is aiming at the SME and mid-market customer base where demand is high for infrastructure.
All agreed that H1 trends were especially seen in changing customer spending habits. This is not characterised by a tightening of purse strings, but by more selective and strategic investment. Hughes commented: “Customers are retaining the same amount of spend but they are being more targeted about its deployment.”
Mora expanded on the point: “Customers are redirecting their spend towards platforms and services, often seeking more measurable impacts and looking to extract value from the existing technologies that they have.” Tickle summarised that customers are trying to spend smarter by ‘prioritising reliability, efficiency and a more long-term return on investment’. He also noted an uptick in demand for flexible, scalable solutions.
Changing perceptions around value mean vendors must facilitate a change in their go-to-market approach for resellers. Mora explained: “The best-performing and smartest resellers aren’t just chasing revenue, they’re building relevance and resilience to make their customer relationships stickier. Relevance means staying aligned with customer expectations, so these resellers are looking for vendors who offer flexible go-to-market options and strong enablement pieces.”
Hughes also emphasised the new value perceptions facing resellers, as well as Evolve IP’s enablement strategy. He said: “If you go into a meeting and talk about features you’re going to be brushed aside. It’s now about measurable outcomes and long-term value.”
To accommodate this, Evolve IP has restructured its sales teams, implementing Technical Account Managers to deliver on outcomes. The company has also invested in tools that chew customer data to quantify business-specific efficiency savings. He added: “It is tangible and personalised and gives something for a CFO or wider buying committee to buy into.”
VeloxServ is also shifting how it does business alongside partners. Tickle said: “Our partner engagements now focus more on collaboration and cooperation, not just the reselling of services. It’s strategic enablement that we’re offering because that’s where the real value is. The winners ultimately will be those that can guide their customers through complexities and deliver tangible results at the end of it.”
Nuso is also facilitating an outcome-based approach for partners by offering a range of options. “We’re constantly investing in technology to enable partners to keep adding value added services to their customers, through our own IP investments and through the acquisition of turnkey technologies,” said Mora. “It’s about allowing customers to enhance existing technology and then migrate, when convenient, to new platforms.
“Our job is to help partners become advisors, not just sellers. If they win customers on trust and on value, we will all grow. Investing the time with the customer and truly understanding their business objectives, their model and their future aspirations remains a central tenet to our channel model.”
Where this approach can be particularly effective for resellers is when specialising down to specific verticals, according to Hughes. He extols the benefit of finding niche markets that resellers can totally own. He said: “If you can package the best solutions and position them in a way that addresses a sector’s niche needs, perhaps with the help of an industry expert, then that world is your oyster. You will build momentum through word of mouth and a growing base of case studies. From a valuation point of view that is going to be a lot more appealing to some buyers.”
This consultative approach requires tighter strategic proximity between suppliers and partners than ever before. Therefore, a key theme throughout the discussion was the steps being taken by vendors to become easier to do business with. Tickle added: “Growth comes from strategic collaboration so our focus is on being as frictionless to work with as possible.”
This is also a focus for Nuso which has relaunched its global websites to be more relevant to customers selling on outcomes. This came alongside a portal relaunch, a new platform allowing for numbering and porting selection and work on toolchain enablement. Evolve IP has taken a similar approach in addressing its partner portal and integrations, enabling its partners to begin provisioning their own numbers rather than having to raise a ticket.
Efficiency matters
Hughes said: “This is the year for becoming more operationally efficient. As the channel, we need to train our thinking on the cost of doing business, not just the cost of buying services, because reductions here will be where the growth comes from. If you can streamline your business from transaction to delivery, you’ll naturally get growth not just through existing customers, but also for future prospects.”
Tickle advised: “Focus on partnerships that offer flexibility, transparency and long-term value. Growth isn’t about chasing volume, it’s about building trust and delivering consistently excellent service. Align with providers that understand your customer’s challenges and can help them to innovate.”
Mora also advocates for resellers to evaluate their existing vendor relationships. He said: “The market has changed, and people have changed, so as technology specialists, resellers should be looking all the time to see what other products and services are available, benchmarking themselves against their competition, and seeing how they can improve their customers journey through the technology minefield.”