Podcast From ScanSource Partner Conference: Customer Experience, EMV, As-A-Service Are All Opportunities For VARs
Paul Constantine, president of ScanSource POS and Barcode North America, and Jim Roddy, president of Business Solutions discussed topics including enhancing the customer experience, the opportunity EMV presents to VARs, and transitioning to managed services at the ScanSource Worldwide Partner Conference for POS and Barcoding, March 16-18.
Constantine says enhancing the customer experience is “one of the biggest opportunities in the enterprise retail space.” He explains as customers “have these experiences in more and more stores, they’re demanding this kind of experience and really, like lots of technology, it starts in the enterprise and works its way down.”
Regarding opportunities in the payments space, Constantine says the opportunity is related to EMV: “It’s going to take two to three years for the retailers in the United States to become fully EMV compliant. We think that this opportunity is measured in the billions of dollars, over the course of those couple years.”
The ScanSource Services Group is growing, and, according to Constantine, the company “sees more and more opportunity to enhance our business through playing a greater role in the services space.”
“The profitability model is changing. It’s moving more towards the services space, obviously. Most of your readers know that,” he continues. “As VARs, they understand that services is where their profitability comes from, and we, as a distributor, are starting to recognize that as well — that playing a greater role in the services space to help our VARs build competencies to perform services and to help them scale could be a potential area for us to enhance our business as well and be able to continue to invest in more other value-added services that can help our partners grow.”
Constantine adds, “The as-a-Service model is obviously taking off in this space, driven by what end users are demanding.” He says ScanSource is “rolling out a couple of different initiatives this year, to help VARs take advantage of the drive by end users to spend less money up front, to pay for their solutions over time, and to pay for outcomes rather than to buy technology.”
Listen to the full interview by clicking below.