iasset.com: iasset.com launches new service to add value in distribution

Services platform iasset.com will be releasing a new as-a-service brokering offer that will help vendors and their distributors gain significant data driven momentum in the market. The as-a-service platform will highlight a vendor's install base data using all of iasset.com's data rearrangement, inquiry, campaign formulation and analytics features, including soon-to-be released agentic AI capabilities, which can then be transmitted across to their channel partners to act upon. iasset.com chief strategy officer Nick Verykios said the concept has been tested with three vendors and one distributor for the past 12 months and it aims to make it available in April. "It was eye opening for all of us as to how much dormant business there is that isn't being managed," Verykios said. "We're not the virtual distributor but we sit between the vendor and distributor - no one is getting cut out of the equation. For the distributors that we have, we're going to make them more powerful with some new tools that are going to continue to challenge their competitors in a big way. Automating sales processes, maximising renewal conversion and enhancing lifetime value of installed assets remains the key driver. It will now be more accessible. "We are entering distribution services in a bigger way and these innovative services will be provided through the vendor. We provide these services for vendor innovation on behalf of their channel, particularly for distributors." Verykios shared how vital the growing automated ecosystem is on the iasset platform; there are currently 1,980 vendor lines of business represented with more than $2.5 billion in assets under management and more than 26,000 partners connected already via current resellers, distributors and vendors using the platform. "The big difference between iasset.com and anything else on the market is that they all focus on renewals only - we eventually get to renewals, which are table stakes, but only after all our customers run the platform to get campaigns running to create relevant and valuable expansion opportunities," he said. Verykios highlighted three main outcomes have come into play from the trials whereby the vendor eventually develops their own instance and becomes an iasset platform customer directly; iasset.com does the renewals service for the vendor, rearranging and reformatting their data to create campaigns and then a third outcome is the vendor wanting the distributor to take on an iasset.com instance and assisting them to do so with some form of funding assistance. "No one is doing this and it's vital - we're seeing churn, estimating billions of dollars of dormant revenue that isn't being looked after," he said. "Vendors are always asking why isn't our channel doing this for us. We're saying it's up to the vendor to enable them to do it and it starts with data mining. This brings the market opportunity and the business opportunity into alignment. There is a difference. "We're going to start slow and it's going to be very disruptive to the market." Verykios set the record straight that there were no plans to re-enter the traditional distribution market despite all the noise surrounding the Arrow ECS A/NZ departure. "We're helping our customers directly and taking distribution to another level. We didn't go back into distribution traditionally, we went back into it indirectly through what we're doing with iasset.com, which was born out of distribution, offering an enhanced business model around customer lifetime value with a unique ability to execute and disrupt the whole landscape," he said. "The squeeze on margin means many distributors can't do too much innovation or they need vendor help. This is one way to help the channel and to significantly accelerate business growth by offering significant customer value. "It's about innovative services that are ingested into the channel but not in a traditional manner."