The Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA), formerly CompTIA’s training business, is seeking to rapidly expand the size of its community base and is investing heavily in increasing value for its members.
Talking to ITEuropa at ChannelCon EMEA in London, GTIA CEO Dan Wensley noted that GTIA’s membership numbers have been static over the last ten years, with little change since his time on the board in 2015. To his count, GTIA has just over 2,500 company members globally, including service providers and vendors, representing around 212,000 individuals who have access to its portals, research and data.
Following the sale of the CompTIA brand in January, and the creation of an endowment that means GTIA will never have to rely on membership fees to survive, it is time to put a renewed focus on growth, emphasised Wensley.
“We need more voices,” he said. “I see the total addressable market in the UK as 12,000 ITSP and I think every one of them should have been here at ChannelCon. We need to make sure that everybody understands the value that we're delivering into the marketplace.”
Wensley’s strategic focus since taking charge in May has been on increasing this value. “Time is the one thing that we can't commoditise, so we have to make sure that folks are getting a return for their membership,” he said. “We are very clear that we want to increase the value for every member, both on the vendor side and the MSP side.”
He pointed out that this means generating additional valuable research and resource, but also finetuning the enablement piece to ensure the research is being utilised to a good outcome. He said: “We've invested in local community managers and our local advisory councils to make sure we are having those conversations that enable members to apply research and to take advantage of it in diversified markets with actionable results.”
Building a more consultative approach with members has been a focus for COO Kelly Ricker since she came back to the company in December to aid the transition to GTIA. She told ITEuropa: “We are practicing what we preach to our members. One size does not fit all, so focus on pain points. Once we know these for individual members, we serve up the resources that are going to be most beneficial to them in the moment that they need them.”
Ricker stated that once the deal was completed on January 9th, the only system in place was for HR and payment. “This gave us a blank slate to put our energy into the areas and systems that would help partners most quickly and efficiently,” she said. “We've got a solid member education team, solid market research and intelligence team, and know they have the financial and systematic support they need to provide the industry with the research and support they need.”
Community is critical
According to Wensley, now is a critical time for MSPs to consider joining a global community due to the rate of change within the market. “The challenges of running a day-to-day service delivery business are difficult enough but as a part of a technology vertical, that is amplified,” he said. “MSPs must constantly be looking forward to what's coming around the corner, such as cyber, cloud and now AI, as well as the changing buying habits and demographics of their customers.
“I would say there's no more important time in the history of the channel because things are just accelerating at a pace we've never seen. Cloud was fast, cyber was fast, managed services is still evolving after a couple of decades but AI’s rate of evolution is unprecedented,” he added.
“You've got to be a part of the conversation to keep pace now. You have no alternative, and we want to be that community and that arena for MSPs to be educated and stay ahead.”
