Reed has been with Computer 2000 for seven years, gaining valuable experience in networking product management and vendor liaison before moving into the role of Microsoft Product Manager and then as a Senior Product Manager covering the entire software business unit portfolio.
More recently he held the position of Microsoft Business Manager and was closely involved in Computer 2000’s campaign to drive value throughout the vendor’s strategic review of its distribution network throughout the first six months of 2007. During this period Reed was instrumental in the development and execution of various initiatives that helped to drive license sales of Microsoft products. He is now looking forward to building on these schemes and extending them to other areas.
“This is a very exciting time for our Software business. Over the next few months we will be looking to build on some of the initiatives that we have developed. We’ll be looking to apply them to other vendors and drive them forward with a view to helping our partners to maximise both new license sales and renewal opportunities”, says Reed.
The company plans to make further significant enhancements to its web-based Licensing OnLine (LOL) service and also to provide more ‘closed loop’ sales support to resellers, enabling them to identify when customer license renewals are due and providing marketing support to ensure that they can maximise the potential for repeat sales. “Licensing is an increasingly important part of our business and that of many resellers. We have led the way in on-line licensing with LOL and we’ll continue to set the pace with some major developments that we have planned for the next 12 months”, says Reed.
Computer 2000 will be forging closer relationships with key vendors to deliver accurate information to resellers on a timely basis, he adds. “We’ll be doing some detailed integration work with our vendor partners and looking to introduce a more automated process for alerting resellers to renewal opportunities. We’ll also be providing sales support to ensure that they can make the most of those opportunities.”
There will also be increased support for “unmanaged” reseller partners, who do not have direct engagement with vendors, says Reed. “The SME market is a major focus for us and we’ll be introducing new programmes designed to help smaller resellers to drive their software and license sales.”