Jacob Pereira (Zoom)
Credit: Provided
Zoom is leveraging the channel opportunity in A/NZ and hopes to ‘keep things simple’ for its partners in the video communications platform ecosystem.
Speaking to Reseller Newsrecently appointed Zoom APAC head of partners Jacob Pereira said that globally, around 30 percent of Zoom’s business is through the channel, but with an “expanded portfolio”, including the launch of its partner program Zoom Up earlier in 2022, “definitely seeing growth in the channel that is critical to success.”
“We’re changing the way the hybrid environment communicates,” he said.
Zoom A/NZ channel sales manager Ashely Allen, recently promoted, added that A/NZ-specific, focus is on launching channel market opportunities by “finding and qualifying the right partner to work with and to build a successful partnership with them. .”
Channel priorities
The challenge for Zoom lies in redefining customer awareness of the brand and its expanded offerings, and communicating with the potential addressable market to drive ecosystem growth.
Pereira said the new offerings go beyond what was available at the start of the pandemic, making Zoom a household name, now “going beyond that to sell a platform.”
“That platform that we have announced to the market is called Zoom One. It’s meetings, chats, whiteboards, webinars and more packaged into one,” he said.
Zoom One aims to create seamless communication for hybrid working environments that transcends individual modes of communication.
“It’s about how different forms of communication can now be combined,” Allen added. “It’s a license for an end-user that gives them a chat function, which can escalate to a voice call, which can seamlessly escalate to a video call, which can escalate to a meeting room environment.”
According to Pereira, the fastest growing branch of the business is the Zoom Phone offering, recently reporting a milestone of 4 million users.
For Pereira, Zoom Phone provides a solution for businesses that want to drive remote, hybrid, and on-premises communications “at the same time.”
Zoom Phone, along with Zoom Rooms, is where channel partners join the picture through product monetization.
Allen noted that a big focus for Zoom is expanding and maturing its Zoom Up partner program to provide a clear route to market for partners.
Allen focuses on “really making sure our partners understand how the program works, how we align our partners with our internal sales teams, and how we work with our partners to build the demand of customers, build opportunity and identify revenue opportunities that they can do in partnership zooming around in additional services, hardware, development and more.”
“At A/NZ in particular, we look at who the partners are that we partner with and how we work with them and align with them as closely as we can”, he continued.
To differentiate themselves in a competitive landscape, Zoom “builds our program around simplicity,” Pereira said, as well as supporting partners to take two different sales routes to market.
The reseller movement allows a reseller partner to have an element of invoicing and additional services to the end customer, and the referral-based movement allows partners to work from a consultancy or “less traditional” IT landscape to identify an opportunity for the Zoom sales team to create, Allen said.
Partners should use the vendor support available to them, Allen said, and the focus is on communicating with the in-country resources available to them, including training partners on available integrations such as DocuSign and ServiceNow.
“A successful channel partnership is one where we’re really closely aligned,” he said.
Zoom NZ regional sales manager Jaron Burbidge added that the virtual event space is an area of demand and opportunity where new offerings can provide solutions in a post-pandemic work environment.
With virtual proving itself as a valid method of event delivery through the pandemic, businesses are looking to a permanent hybrid mode of event delivery as a way to reach larger audiences.
“We need to make it really easy and frictionless for people to drive hybrid events,” Burbidge said.
Market challenges
Allen said that what they are seeing from customers following the emergence from a difficult economic period, and amid expectations that this period may continue, is that IT investment decisions are “more which is considered”.
“People have had to make very quick decisions over the last 12, to 18, to 24 months and now they’re taking the time to really look at what the total cost of ownership is,” he said.
Pereira shared his view on the main challenges facing the general market, summarizing them in three areas: “trust, talent, and innovation”.
On transformation, he said that “governments and organizations” need to look at what the “change agenda” is, whether that is the 4-day work week that some areas are considering, or moving to permanent hybrid working, and how that can help. to the next challenge of talent retention.
The ‘trust’ part comes as a need for employers to have confidence that their employees can work productively remotely.
Pereira shared that the Zoom One platform offering helps with “unified communication” that addresses market challenges.
Zoom also recently launched its global investment arm, Zoom Ventures, dedicated to driving innovation in its ecosystem.
Zoom Ventures will focus on early- to growth-stage companies that offer solutions that align with the core video platform and its adjacent products.
