Public Sector Sales Show Promise for Channel Partners

In a poll by Canalys, a global technology market analyst firm now owned by Informa, Channel Futures’ parent company, analysts found that 29% of channel partners who responded said more than 50% of their revenue comes from the public sector.

According to Canalys, 14% of channel partners derive between 30% and 49% of their revenue from public sector sales, with 20% noting they get between 10% and 29% of their moolah from public sector sales.

An additional 20% shared that less than 10% of their sales come from the public sector, with 17% stating they don’t sell to public sector customers. That poll featured responses from over 300 channel partners, which got us thinking — where does the opportunity lie in the public sector?

Techaisle’s Anurag Agrawal

Anurag Agrawal, founder and chief global analyst at Techaisle, shared with Channel Futures in a recent virtual sit-down that “Some of the critical supplier partner selection criteria of public sector firms [are] focused on security, governance, certification and automation. If partners invest in three areas to make inroads into the public sector, they should be specialization, certification and verticalization.”

So, therein lies the opportunity for channel partners, so it seems.

Unified Communications & Collaboration Firms Embrace Public Sector

Companies like Avaya have long extended public sector offerings and offerings for federal, state, and local governments, public safety, the intelligence community and more.

COMMfusion’s Blair Pleasant

In a post about Avaya’s efforts on the public sector front at last year’s Engage event, COMMfusion president and principal analyst Blair Pleasant wrote, “To help gain more traction in this market, the company has been focusing on consultants, lobbyists and other influencers. For example, Avaya created a public sector consultant community designed to help facilitate education and sharing of best practices for government consultants.”

Avaya, essentially, launched a program that lends partners digital assets and best practices, education on relevant topics and technologies, a microsite, bulletins and emails, C-level meetings and more, Pleasant notes.

Others in the UCC industry have their own government-centric offerings including Zoom for Government, Webex Government Solutions, and GovSlack, dipping their toes into the public sector pool, making it clear their efforts in the area are more than surface-level.

Channel Partners Are Vital in Public Sector Sales, Says Analyst

InFlow Analysis’ David Smith

On the opportunity front, David Smith, founder and principal of InFlow Analysis, told Channel Futures, “I think what we’ve been seeing is that public sector workloads are growing more diverse and complex. So, partners have to be very solutions focused. For the public sector, the key areas are moving to the cloud, cybersecurity and AI.”

Smith says partners need to focus, adding, “These are the ‘big’ opportunity areas, and at the heart of this is dealing with tons of data, data analytics,and delivering secure citizen services.”

Furthermore, according to Smith, most public sector sales in his experience almost always involve a partner — with Smith further adding, “I have never gone direct with a public sector organization without a partner.”

Partners Have Nearly 20 Million Reasons to Target Public Sector Sales

That is to say, nearly 20 million folks were working in the public sector in 2022, according to Statista. That means state and local governments, a figure significantly more than the almost 3 million federal employees that exist.

For now, it seems there is a lot of promise in public sector sales, and that growth should only skyrocket as cybersecurity becomes more of a concern in the public sector. The goal for firms producing public-sector-centric offerings is to keep these agencies secure and collaborating, [as to – not be] compromised.

There are, of course, threats — both internal and external — beyond the control of said firms, such as social engineering, hackers and employees who leak sensitive data.