NAVIGATING CHALLENGING TIMES

For CHANNEL Middle East Magazine’s latest feature, Editor Sarah Rizvi caught up with Channel Stakeholders to gauge the current pulse of the channel and understand how Partners can wrestle the immediate and far-reaching effects of the pandemic.
Here you can read VAD’s General Manager Mario M. Veljovic full Interview with the Editor:

1.        How has COVID-19 impacted your business with existing customers?
MV: The combination of COVID-19 and Ramadan has negatively impacted the overall Business – no doubt. But we kept ourselves very busy with a number of Marketing Activities alongside our Partners and Vendors and successfully build promising Business Opportunities, which let us look positively into the near and mid term future.
2.        How have you adapted your market strategy to counter this impact?
MV: VAD Technologies’ vision has been ever since its inception to introduce disruptive and innovative solutions to the regional ICT market. Solutions that are very useful, especially now, where we need to remotely manage IT Infrastructure, business and relationships. In addition Solutions that help to fight COVID-1(, such as Fever Detection Solutions, saw a strong surge in demand. As such our Strategy wasn’t in need of change, rather the current times encouraging us to press forward with the existing strategy.
3.        How are you working with your partners to help get through this crisis?
MV: We might be used to video conferences and webinars, but there is no alternative to direct and personal interaction in order to build a successful business relationship. Hence currently Partners face bigger challenges to generate new Pipeline, if this is not for some in high demand solutions that help manage the current crises. Accordingly we need to support our Partners even more than usual.
Having said this, we have been conducting a number of Marketing Activities, including Webinars and Virtual Roundtables, on behalf of our Partners. Furthermore, in collaboration with our vendors we have been able to give our partners access to disruptive and innovative solutions for their own use completely free or with very high NFR (not for resell) discounts.
4.        How do the prospects look like for the channel?
MV: Customers’ cloud acceptance and adoption – or cloudification, as we like to call it at VAD – and digital transformation is gaining massive momentum. Every customer has now understood the importance of a reliable contingency plan and how technology is playing a key role. Consequently the ICT Channel future looks very positive, if their Product & Services Portfolio is upgrade to address today’s Customer’s demands.
5.        How would you advise the channel to grow its business if this crisis persists or gets escalated?
MV: Now we need to work harder and smarter to reach out to our ecosystem, whether it’s to Partners or Customers. Channel is all about relationship and that’s what we need to focus on. It’s your existing Relationships and the job well done in the past in terms of your relationship with your Ecosystem, that will get your successfully through this times and probably let you emerge even stronger.
 
The full Feature and the July 2020 Edition of CHANNEL Middle East can be found online here:
https://mags.itp.com/ChannelMiddleEast/2020/1803-CHE-JULY-SEPT2020
​