When it comes to selling cloud services, it’s one thing convincing prospective customers to choose your business, it’s another making sure your services can meet their compliance needs.
To be a successful channel partner, you need to be able to demonstrate knowledge of your customers’ line of business which includes understanding that their regulatory requirements can make or break a deal.
Levels of compliance will vary depending on what vertical your customer falls into. For instance, those in healthcare or financial services will be facing much higher levels of regulatory compliance compared to organisations in media or tourism. Likewise, smaller, independent businesses will tend to have less stringent compliance needs compared to their larger counterparts.
Whether your sales strategy is to specialise your customer base in a certain vertical, or diversify out, one thing is clear: being an expert in cloud implementation is crucial. After all, as the below figures show, there are plenty of exciting cloud opportunities to be gained by channel sellers:
- The global healthcare cloud computing market is expected to be worth $9.48 billion by 2020
- The global finance cloud market is expected to be worth $29.47 billion by 2021
- The global retail cloud market is expected to reach $40,723.5 million by 2023
- The global education market is expected to reach $25.36 billion by 2021
- The worldwide public cloud services market is expected to be worth $186.4 billion in 2018
The GDPR effect
The upcoming GDPR presents a compliance challenge that applies to businesses operating in the EU and beyond. It also presents a great opportunity for channel sellers to demonstrate their value to a wide number of customers.
This includes everything from ensuring customers undergo the right cloud infrastructure upgrades, to having the right cloud backup and recovery systems in place.
It’s worth noting, a key issue for GDPR is the cloud, and its role where data is concerned. Where is this data going to reside? How is it going to be sent to the cloud? Will it be secure?
Certain data may not be suitable. Other data should only reside on a private cloud. Data needs to be backed up in a manner that allows for easy recovery and discovery should citizens request it.
Again, being able to help your customers with these questions is the key to success.
Stand out with your knowledge
The cloud offers plenty of benefits to customers. From the flexibility to scale up and down, the ability for employees to access apps or data on-demand, to a pay-as-you-go model, which means there are minimal up-front capital investments. It’s not surprising the forecast for cloud is all positive.
However, unlike the old days when the onus was on individual businesses to achieve cloud compliance, today, some regulatory bodies now expect cloud service providers to operate in a manner that promotes safe cloud usage.
A good start would be to partner with a supplier who can provide you with world-class service and support. A standards-based security system will ensure you remain compliant, alongside your customers. Risk assessments, regular audits and a clear SLA will also help.
Being up-to-date with current trends, innovations in the cloud, compliance will help you align the best solutions to your customers’ needs.
