Exclusive Interview - Punit Kapoor, Channel Director, Commvault

Punit Kapoor, Director, Channel and Distribution, India and SAARC, Commvault talks to us about the channel strategies of his organisation after the learnings from the lockdown period.

What were Commvault's learnings through the pandemic? 

Punit Kapoor - Pandemic came with a plethora of challenges for every organization, coupled with a fair share of learnings and opportunities. One of the biggest learning for us is to understand that for a company to successfully grow, they must be willing to evolve, invest and innovate not just in their products, but also in their relationships with their partners and customers.

We understood that the success of our channel partners needs to be simple in order for them to truly emerge a winner. To achieve this, we need to always be listening to our valued partners and make tremendous progress with our simplicity and “ease of doing business” approach. Whether it’s sales training, technical enablement, or pricing, we need to always be improving our tools and processes to ensure that we’re their partner of choice.

Our partners look to Commvault as their innovation engine for Intelligent Data Management Solutions, and we will continue to accelerate our capabilities, educating and training our partners on our radically simple, partner-ready portfolio.

We want our partners to be ‘future-ready’ with Commvault, by providing them with a program that helps accelerate profits and grow their business by solving their customers’ biggest data management challenges. 

Commvault's 3E partner approach of Engagement, Empathy and Evolving Together? 

Punit Kapoor - As the world shifted to the work from home norm, one of the trends that emerged very strongly during this crisis was the trust among individuals and among organisations and the sense of unity that came with it.  Given our partner-centric approach combined with the learnings gained from the pandemic we devised our 3Es approach: Engagement, Empathy and Evolving Together.

1. Engage: It’s not that engagement was not there during the pre-Covid era, but the pandemic taught us all of being cognizant of the value of this connection that we have person to person. Constant engagement is key.
2. Empathise: Being empathetic to your partners by putting yourself in their shoes is very important. This can be done by understanding the situation your partners are in, proactively. Then charting out a plan of how we they can be helped. Engagement and Empathy go hand in hand. It’s done by listening to our partners, adjusting along the way. This is how we will truly be able to help them.
3. Evolving Together: It is important for the organisations to evolve in tandem with our channel partners. To attain this well coordinated stage, one will have to not only understand what their partners’ business goals are but also what their personal goals are. This is true even for customers. For instance, it’s important to understand the strategic goal of an organisation but at the same time it is equally to understand the decision makers on a personal level.

These 3E’s are a perfect formula to understand and thrive together with your partners in the coming years.

What are the trends that you see in the ecosystem that will define the future? 

Punit Kapoor - Following are some trends that will become strong in future -

1. Level up through upskilling: In a rapidly evolving digital era, Now is the perfect time for trainings and reskilling for partners so that they can become the trusted technology advisors to their customers, especially when it comes to delivering newer data technologies. This investment is especially crucial when progressive enterprises demand foundational expertise from their partners.

2. The Future SaaS and Subscription Economy: As businesses continue to make huge investments on digital transformation technology involving IoT, Big Data, AI, blockchain and cloud computing, SaaS offerings continue to grow in support of these initiatives and the sector is a multi-billion-dollar business worldwide. In 2021, SaaS will continue to evolve with new capabilities like storage, container and cloud technologies converging to allow automated infrastructure management processes and simplified multi cloud environments which will reap the benefits of costs reductions and accelerated time to market.

3. Powering the trust: The massive digital evolution in India has resulted in a deluge of business opportunities. Considering that the choice in vendors with whom to partner is ever expanding, trust will be at an all-time premium. In the face of changing macro-economic and technology factors, it will also be imperative for vendors and partners to reimagine not just their product and service offering, but the ‘relationship’ built on trust, which can make or break, even a strong business relationship in these unprecedented times.

4. Post-Covid world is  a Data driven world: As remote work gets embedded in our way of life, it will evolve even further in terms of more agile infrastructure, having applications that help employees’ remote experience, and more complexities that data management systems will be able to solve. Data will be at the heart of this technological transformation journey, where channel partners and vendors will work more closely than ever to embrace open collaboration, rooted in trust, in order to help customers achieve a data-led digital growth.

What are the challenges partners are facing and how can these challenges be resolved?

Punit Kapoor - In today’s digital era, solution providers are increasingly realising that it’s important from them to partner with a vendor that not only keeps up with the latest trends but is also the one they can trust to drive them. With so many cloud options available today, it becomes even tougher for solution providers to find the vendor that best complements their unique business strategy while helping them reach their desired revenue goals.

As a channel-led company, nurturing and evolving our strong partner ecosystem is critical to everything we do at Commvault, and a key priority for our Global Partner Organisation. To empower our partners, we have created a simple, streamlined programme with all of the critical tools, training, and innovative solutions that drive our partners’ business opportunities – further strengthening our partnerships and joint success.

In working with our partners, our goal is to provide the best opportunities for their growth. From a simplified structure and attainable tier requirements and discounts, to a partner seller incentive program and new growth and performance rebates – we are able to help our partners create profitable outcomes.