Synnex this week announced Varnex 2.0, an evolution of the distributor’s 10-year-old exclusive peer-to-peer reseller community. At the same time, Synnex celebrated its 40^th year in business. These events were discussed this week at the two-day Fall Varnex 2020 (virtual) conference.

Varnex 2.0 will be technology-driven. To date, the peer-to-peer community has been more focused on marketing, collaboration and partnerships. According to Synnex, its custom community of resellers – about 450 in North America – represents more than $1.3 billion in annual topline revenue.

Synnex’s Michael Urban

Michael Urban, president, worldwide technology solutions distribution at Synnex, elaborates on Varnex 2.0. He talks about what Varnex 2.0 means to existing Varnex partners, as well as potential members the company wants to attract.

Channel Futures: Big step to evolve the exclusive Varnex program. Tell us more.

Michael Urban: Varnex 2.0 means that we’re looking forward to having a much more advanced program for our customer partners. We’ve had a strong partnership with Varnex members and support them in all ways. But with 2.0, the idea of Varnex is enhanced, making it richer for the market.

What we’ve seen is that the partner focus over the past 10 years is broad. Our customers asked for certain deliverables, say a PC and software, etc. But now solutions are more complex. We’ve seen partners migrate to a more niche approach focusing on a certain area. They’re specialists, they know what to do and they’ve found a way to make money in this niche. Specialization has been key for many of our Varnex partners.

Now, there’s one issue with that. You might not be able to offer a complete solution to a customer. The risk is that a customer may have to go to someone else that has a broader portfolio or solution.

With our partners, we looked into what has to change in the Varnex community.

CP: Tell us more about Varnex 2.0.

MU: The outcome is to make Varnex bigger and better. About a year ago, we reactivated the “Solvs” on the technology side. We’d also like to have more Solvs, as each is specialized in a certain area. [Here are the Synnex technology Solvs: CollabSolv,

VisualSolv, MobilitySolv, SecurityNetSolv, UCSolv, PrintSolv, PowerSolv, ComponentSolv, and StorageSolv.] Here’s what the Solvs mean for partners. For example, the CollabSolv: What you find is a dedicated team, or business unit, with project managers, sales and service to support the implementation. The same goes for the other Solvs.

Together with the Varnex community, we decided that if you want to be a Varnex member in the future you have to be recommended on one of the Solvs. Then we know you’re a specialist for that Solv.

So if a Varnex member is approached by a customer for collaboration and this member is capable but specializes in another Solv, another Varnex member specialist can be brought in. The customer engagement is led by the initial partner. And Synnex guarantees this all works out and no one takes another member’s customer.

That’s the foundation of the change to Varnex 2.0.

CF: Is Varnex 2.0 ready to go?

MU: This is the announcement, and now we have more work to do. We already built out a dedicated team within Synnex who will work with partners. We’ll continue to make investments as Varnex 2.0 grows.

Some Varnex members are already prequalified as Varnex 2.0 members. They will also be more present in the market and we’ll do more marketing activities. There will be more vendor support, and Synnex will stand behind its Varnex 2.0 members. Customers won’t have to stray to find a more qualified partner.

We know that existing Varnex members are qualified because …

… many work in at least one Solv. If a partner isn’t qualified in any Solv, then we ask them qualify for at least one Solv over the next 12 months. Qualifying for two, max three Solvs is what we’re looking for. And that depends on the size of the partner organization. Some may have more.

CF: Are you looking for new partners?

MU: We need more partners, given the number of technology Solvs and the current number of Varnex members. It leaves a lot of holes across the country. We’re not looking for 10,000 new partners; more like 1,000 for coverage in the U.S. and another 100 in Canada. I expect this will happen over the next six months.

Members work together via a collaboration network. We manage and support that but we’re not active in end-customer calling. That’s the partner’s job. We bring a platform for members to interact with any Solv member.

We believe that it’s good if our partners don’t operate alone because the market is getting more difficult. The market is also growing – $4.7 trillion in global IT investments this year for digital transformation. And in 10 years, that number will be as much as $14 trillion.

Part of Varnex 2.0 is to help customers on the digital transformation journey. We want to qualify them for new technologies as well. There are currently nine technology Solvs. I see us adding one or two more Solvs. However, we don’t want to go to broad or too niche.

CF: How does supplying vertical solutions come into play in Varnex 2.0?

MU: We have vertical Solvs, such as a government Solv. These are overlays to our technology Solvs. Other verticals are hospitality and medical.