Following on from our blog about how our digital habits have changed over recent years, the ways we think about marketing and doing business may change due to circumstances within our current daily lives. Our digital habits may change, however, the coronavirus itself may force us all to re-evaluate how we conduct business.
In order to try and contain the spread of infection, many trade shows and events organized by OEMs have been postponed or canceled altogether. Web ex and video conferencing software are nothing new and have been around for many years, but I still hear many partners say that they don’t use it much or have operational issues with it, so people still travel hundreds of miles each week to interact face to face with people. Whilst it’s still important to meet people and talk about challenges and projects in order to form strong business relationships, as the free movement becomes more problematic in certain regions across the world to try and contain the coronavirus, many companies are looking at investing more in new tools to be able to communicate via web and video links. The effects of this outbreak may force us to change some of our traditional habits of customer engagement, which in the long turn help to reduce future travel and carbon emissions. Mat Jordan posted an excellent blog on our site about the number of resources used to simply make a laptop and the effects on the environment, and Procurri provides a number of different solutions to help partners provide solutions to their customers to help offset some of their carbon emissions through lifecycle solutions
With trade shows being canceled, businesses will look long-term at what benefits they get from going to an event. It may be a case of business as usual, and not having a stand at a trade show had no effect on revenue streams whatsoever, so now review the costs associated with such events and have trouble justifying it. On the reverse, organizations may see a drop in revenues and realize how important such events are to their business and look to grow such marketing in the future. Businesses are also looking at the prospect of people self-isolating and working from home on government advice. Whilst working from home is common in many organizations these days, this is something that only 20 years ago would have been a major challenge for many organizations.
One thing we do know for sure is that the manufacturing of technology products has already been greatly affected, and this is looking likely to continue for some time yet. This will have a knock-on effect leading to constraints of product and much longer lead times for new technology, which can hamper end-user projects. Procurri can help our partners with short-term third-party maintenance solutions to keep the lights on while their customers sweat the assets they have during this period or provide rental solutions to bridge the gap of lead times and ensure project deadlines are met.
Procurri’s services are designed for the channel and help complement their OEM framework agreements rather than conflict with them. Why not set up a Webex session with me to see how we can help you solve some of the current challenges you may face in your customer projects?
