Pax8 Finds Cloud Growth By 'Tearing Up' Legacy Distribution Processes

Executives from cloud distributor Pax8 credit the company's commitment to being different from the distribution status quo for helping it grow 4,000 percent in three years.

"The common denominator with legacy business that are no longer around in traditional distribution is that they fail to adapt to the needs of a shifting market," said Pax8 Channel Chief Ryan Walsh Sunday during a keynote address at the XChange 2018 conference in San Antonio, Texas. "That shifting market was focused on a new customer experience, on efficiencies that weren't available with the markets they were currently serving … You have to smash these legacy processes. You have to actually tear up these legacy processes."

The Greenwood Village, Colo.-based cloud-based distributor ranked 68 on the Inc. 5000 list for its growth, thanks in part to some of the 300 solution providers in room, many of whom were already working with Pax8.

[Related: Pax8 CEO John Street: We've Geared The Whole Company For Speed]

For solution provider Alliance Business Technologies, the decision to switch from a traditional distributor to Pax8 brought with it some obvious improvements.

"The processes was irritating," said Taylor Mercedes, operations manager for the Harrisburg, Pa.-based solution provider, of the flaws in Alliance Business Technologies' previous distribution partnership. "We had problems provisioning, and we have better margins on Pax8. They have an ASCII partnership, so we got a nice discount with that. It's just super easy to use," she said.

Mercedes sees opportunities to collaborate with Pax8 to help Alliance Business Technologies expand its Microsoft business.

'We haven't really gotten into [Microsoft] Azure too much, so I feel like our tech team could probably use some training on that," she said.

Kyle Oakley, chief technology officer with Golden Tech in Valparaiso, Ind., said Pax8 brings a lot of value to its customers.

"I can tell you as a recently new Pax8 customer, we swapped primarily for the [Microsoft] Office 365 side of things, and we immediately saw less stress on our billing team," Oakley said. "We immediately saw an increase in our margins just from changing from a traditional distributor to Pax8 as our distributor."

Walsh said another critical component of Pax8 is how it handles customers after the sale by increasing efficiencies.

"Whether you use Pax8 or someone else, you really need to implement efficiency into your process," Walsh said. "What we found is we're taking 7 to 10 hours of billing reconciliation out a month for the partners that are using our integrations."

On top of that, Oakley said he loves Pax8's Cloud Wingman service, which for a small MSP like his can be a lifeline.

"They'll get down in the nitty gritty with you. They'll answer questions," he said. "For MSPs, that's important. Especially for smaller MSPs we only have limited resources. So you're either faced with hiring an expert or leveraging your partnerships to take advantage of those services."