Resellers
SPECIALISTS TAKE CHARGE
Channel partners with deep vertical knowledge are increasingly securing the
highest-value opportunities, as organisations prioritise expertise, integration capability and long-term strategic support, says Marcin Pichur, Vice President, Sales EMEA and APAC at DocuWare.
F
or quite some time now, the UK and Irish tech channel has operated on a familiar rhythm. Make sure you expand your portfolio, cater to every
customer type, and stay competitive by offering ‘a bit of everything.’ Tis may have worked when organisations simply needed tools – like email, storage, servers, collaboration platforms - and partners were rewarded for breadth over precision. But that era is disappearing... and quicker than we all think. Across MSPs, VARs, resellers and service providers, I’m
clearly seeing a new pattern taking shape. Te partners winning the largest, most strategic deals aren’t the ones with the biggest catalogue. Instead, they’re the ones with a deep grasp of a specific customer world. Tey’ve moved away from being more universal suppliers and evolved into sector native problem solvers. Tis shiſt isn’t superficial. It’s structural. And it’s reshaping the competitive landscape of the channel.
Customers have changed what they value To me, the biggest change in customer behaviour is straightforward. Organisations no longer judge partners by the size of their product stack. Tey judge them by their ability to deliver operational outcomes. When a CFO approves a project today, licences rarely
drive the decision. Tey’re thinking about reducing manual processing, eliminating audit risk, accelerating financial cycles or improving supply chain visibility. Tese are business conversations, not technology discussions, and they demand partners who already understand the operational realities of the customer’s sector. A generalist
28 | September/October 2026
talks about features. A specialist talks about bottlenecks. And bottlenecks are what secure the budget. Tis shiſt also changes how customers assess risk. A
generalist introduces uncertainty because they still need to learn the customer’s world. Whereas a specialist brings confidence because they’ve solved similar problems for similar organisations. And, in a market where every investment is scrutinised, confidence really does win.
Intelligent automation has moved the goalposts For years, document platforms were treated as digital storage. A place to keep PDFs, emails, forms and scanned paperwork. Intelligent automation has changed that. Technologies such as DocuWare’s Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) can classify documents automatically, extract key data points, validate information, route content into workflows and trigger downstream processes. But IDP becomes truly valuable only when applied
inside a specific vertical. A generalist sells ‘document automation’, but a specialist redesigns the likes of goods-in workflows, quality documentation cycles, NHS referral routing and supplier onboarding. Tat’s operational redesign – and customers pay a premium for that. Tis is also where specialists gain long-term advantage.
Once they’ve redesigned one workflow, they can replicate the pattern across dozens of similar organisations. Teir expertise becomes reusable IP. Not simply knowledge, but methodology. Generalists simply can’t compete with that level of repeatable value.
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