ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
all their existing and potential customers. For some the solution will be 8x8 Small Business, while for others it will be 8x8 Engage, 8x8 Contact Center, and 8x8 AI Studio. The point is, we are now there for every business a partner may want to try and support.”
Partner feedback played an important role in shaping the offering. According to Masterton, resellers found that smaller opportunities could demand almost as much sales and provisioning effort as larger deals while generating significantly less revenue.
“ Partners told us fixed seat counts and annual contracts were costing them deals in the sub-100-seat segment because a 25-seat prospect takes nearly the same sales and provisioning effort as a much larger one, for a fraction of the revenue, and many walked rather than sign a rigid agreement.”
Consumption needs adoption Greater flexibility alone, however, will not guarantee growth.
Masterton believes one of the most important opportunities for partners is to combine consumption-based commercial models with a much greater focus on customer adoption.
Lower commitments can encourage customers to experiment with technologies without making significant upfront commitments. For partners, that can create opportunities to introduce additional capabilities and strengthen customer relationships.
But the commercial benefits only materialise if customers actually use what they buy.
“ That said, low commitment alone isn’ t the win, adoption is. If a customer signs up to a consumption model and never actually adopts the product properly, nobody wins, the partner doesn’ t grow the account and the customer doesn’ t see the value. So adoption has to sit right alongside consumption.”
Partners that invest in onboarding and help customers make effective use of technology are therefore better positioned to turn initial consumption into longer-term expansion.
That connects directly with another change Masterton sees across the channel: a move away from selling specifications towards selling business outcomes.
“ Customers don’ t buy a platform, they buy a result: fewer dropped calls, faster resolution, a better customer experience. Partners who can walk into a conversation with a use case and an outcome, not just a spec sheet, are the ones winning deals and keeping them.”
Alongside the SMB opportunity, Masterton sees considerable potential for partners to expand within existing accounts by increasing adoption across products such as 8x8 Engage, 8x8 Contact Center and 8x8 AI Studio.
The more extensively a customer uses the platform, she argues, the more durable and valuable the relationship can become for the partner.
AI changes what partners can deliver Artificial Intelligence is adding another dimension to this transition by changing both the technologies partners sell and how they operate their own businesses.
One significant development is the increasing democratisation of sophisticated technology. Masterton points to the ability of small organisations to access capabilities that would previously have been associated primarily with much larger enterprises.
“ Everyone is still getting used to changing decades of how we worked and operated. It’ s quite the mindshift to see that with modern products and AI, a small business with 10 people can have more or less identical tools to a multinational with hundreds of staff.”
She believes AI is also allowing partners to become more closely involved in solving individual customer problems.
Using tools such as 8x8 AI Studio, partners can work with customers to develop bespoke applications and workflows using natural language, potentially reducing development cycles while providing solutions more closely aligned with individual business requirements.
“ This doesn’ t just take development cycles from months to weeks, or even days, it means companies get the exact tools they need, while seeing the partner supporting them as genuinely invested in what they’ re trying to achieve. It also makes the partner more embedded with each customer.”
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