Leveraging Cloud Broker Services to Accelerate B2B Growth

Scale | August 2, 2019 | 4 min read
The B2B equation hasn’t changed. B2B organizations exist to provide products, services, or both, to other businesses. What has changed is the scope of products and services that B2B organizations can provide to their business clients. Through the cloud broker business model, B2Bs can almost instantly acquire the capacity to expand product lines. But, service lines can be a little more challenging. Enter the cloud broker services model.

Some services require specialized knowledge and large allocations of time and resources, making it hard for cloud brokers to scale these offerings. That’s where external cloud broker services teams come in who can provide cloud brokers with the flexibility to focus on core competencies while still meeting a wider breadth of client needs.

What are Cloud Broker Services?

Cloud broker services are the intangible assets that often accompany cloud broker products. For example, a cloud broker might sell a product for social media marketing to a business client, and then they might supplement that product with a social posting fulfilment service. This is an example of a cloud broker service offering.

BUT, there’s another level.

It’s the age of the reseller model. Most cloud solutions, from G Suite to Oracle, now offer reseller models where other B2B businesses can partner with the solution developers and gain exclusive access to price, package, and resell these cloud solutions. It makes sense, the cloud solution developers gain new sales and revenue lines, and the resellers earn credibility and generate more compelling client-facing business offerings.

This model laid the foundation for the emergence of cloud brokers in the B2B space.

This model also laid the foundation for a new market of cloud broker services. 

As alluded to above, a cloud broker may not have the internal resources or expertise to fulfill on all of the service requirements of customers. Fortunately, there are a few fulfilment models within the cloud broker services space.

Cloud Broker Services Fulfilment

If you are reselling cloud solutions in addition to your core line of business, then you have 3 options in offering cloud broker services:

  1. Fulfill the services internally with your own team
  2. Outsource fulfilment work to solution developers
  3. Partner with a white-label cloud broker services fulfilment team

If you’re finding you don’t have the time, the staff, or the necessary expertise to complete fulfilment internally, then you may want to look at options 2 and 3 as a means to have the work completed externally.

Case: SOCi

SOCi is a cloud-based social media marketing and review platform. SOCi sells direct to end business consumers, but they also partner with other B2Bs through a reseller model. They understand that lots of resellers don’t have all the tools necessary to offer fulfilment on the platform, so they have a SOCi assist program to help resellers with service fulfilment work.

Case: Vendasta

Vendasta is best defined as a cloud service brokerage, a company that enables other B2Bs to complete the cloud broker transformation with a single cloud broker platform. This is made possible through the following solution set:

    1. Vendor marketplace to house dozens of resellable cloud solutions
    2. A sales and marketing automation powered CRM to enable clients to sell better
    3. A rebrandable business app for cloud brokers to leverage as a means to give business clients a single login to manage all of their solutions
    4. A white-label cloud broker services fulfilment team to help you scale by completing work under your brand

Vendasta works with B2B organizations from a breadth of industries, some of which include: marketing agencies, software companies, IT companies, publishers, TV/radio broadcast companies, major brands/franchises, directories, banks, telecommunications companies, cable companies, and more. Many organizations across these various sectors have discovered great value in having a 3rd party fulfilment team to stimulate scaled growth.

Conclusion

Cloud brokers are the future of B2B. As a cloud broker, adding cloud broker services to product offerings is one of the fastest routes to building stronger client relationships and opening new lines of revenue. 

But service offerings require greater time and resource allocation, and not all cloud brokers are best equipped to fulfill on all of the services that they’d like to sell. That’s where external cloud broker services teams enter the equation.

Click here if you’re interested in learning how to become a cloud broker with the help of a cloud broker services team.

Turn your digital agency into a scalable power house with Vendasta

About the Author

Brock is a Former Marketing Analyst at Vendasta with a passion for the more creative things in life. He also answers to Archie - for obvious reasons... And when he's not putting his fingers in paint, or saving Riverdale, he can usually be found asking Google one of the many more embarrassing "how to" questions.

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