Clearwater, Fla.-based distributor Tech Data Corp. has published the first edition of a new quarterly online publication designed to provide information about technology industry trends and opportunities to its resellers in the U.S. and Canada.
Called the Advanced Technologies Playbook, the new partner education resource was announced at the distributor’s Channel Link conference, which is currently taking place in Atlanta, Ga. It’s designed to help Tech Data VARs enter new and emerging markets more easily by introducing them to customer needs and solutions they may not know about yet.
The playbook is produced by Tech Data’s Technical Services team, based on the thousands of queries its pre- and postsales technicians field daily.
“A lot of the articles are written by our engineers because they’re talking about experiences and what kinds of calls they’re actually receiving,” says vice president of technical services Maurice Hamilton. “They’re doing this every day.”
Arming those engineers to provide deeper, more relevant advice to resellers was one of Hamilton’s top objectives when he stepped into his current role roughly two years ago. A veteran of the IT industry with more than 34 years under his belt, Hamilton joined Tech Data after prior stints with distributors CDW and PCM. Based on that experience he made getting his team certified on vendor technologies and exposing them to cross-platform training two of his initial priorities.
“You need to talk the whole language of the data center,” he explains.
Sharing that new expertise with partners and connecting resellers to programs and initiatives from the 34 OEMs his group works with were two additional early focus areas. Like the new playbook introduced today, all of those efforts dovetail with Hamilton’s larger responsibility.
“Everything I’m pretty much doing is to focus on enabling the partners,” he says.
Hamilton’s group may add further playbooks focused on specific vendors in 2017.
