Axiz has developed a B2B digital platform that will transform the way it works and transacts with its partner ecosystem.
"We realise that if we're going to compete, we have to respond to the significant shifts that digital transformation requires [from] the industry," says Craig Brunsden, MD of Axiz.
"To meet the needs of our partners, we decided it was time to serve ourselves up digitally. We aim to create a digital twin of the Axiz business, offering our products and services in a digital format. We realised that customers need to improve productivity while reducing friction in effecting business."
Brunsden says the past couple of decades have seen tremendous shifts in the IT landscape, in-cluding the IT boom, dot-com bomb, a major recession. "We have seen waves of trends and new technologies cause ripples in the market. However, the majority of these trends have been more of a shift in technologies.
"We are now seeing digital transformation shaking up the industry, and for the first time, all the hype is real."
At a time when Axiz is celebrating its 30th birthday, all distributors are looking to acquire or expand services and solution offerings, and have had to revamp their channel offerings to reflect the new digital dynamics we see today, notes Brunsden.
He says this is not only about e-commerce and procuring products on a portal. "We are talking about the consumption of cloud services, as well as the bundling of services, including cloud and tangible products."
Technologies such as digital, cloud, mobile, hyper-converged infrastructure and analytics are going to be what drives the company's growth and development over the next few years.
Axiz sees itself becoming more services-oriented, and more of an aggregator, on-selling services and skills to partners that need them.
"Take a skilled role, such as a cyber security engineer. Because resellers are under pressure, not all of them will have the volume of business to support skills of that nature. However, if we can sell those skills in increments, to enable resellers who will buy their time, as and when required, we satisfy a need in their business."
Axiz has gone through many changes over its 30-year history, from starting as a component dis-tributor, to its acquisition by Alviva (then Pinnacle Holdings) and merger with Workgroup.
Brunsden says the company's future success depends on its ability to do business in the emerging digital economy.
"It's no longer just a question of how digital transformation is affecting the channel, and how we can help our partners manage this change, it's how digital transformation is affecting our own business. We have to transform with our customers."
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