“This is a great spot to leverage the power of the TSDs and their advisers and a way to make it a win for all involved,” Kane said, noting that Front gets “very qualified opportunities” through the TSD channel. “Partners today are more impactful and more relevant in today’s environment than ever before.”

“We have long-established sales partners with impressive books of business,” said Ben Edwards, director of CX and AI at Sandler Partners, based in Redondo Beach, Calif., in the CRN interview. Those agents, he said, deeply understand their customers, their IT needs and use cases, and the expected outcomes of IT initiatives.

TSDs like Sandler Partners, he said, work alongside those agents throughout the sales process, guiding them to and qualifying the vendor products that best fit the end customers’ needs and then managing the sales transactions.

“Our sales partners look at our technical team here at Sandler Partners, and they like to take advantage of our resources,” Edwards said. “We’ve come from the real world. We’ve led real infrastructure teams. I led a contact center team. And so we’re personally and professionally very familiar with that high-volume, critical role in serving customers. And the sales partners feel comfortable when they bring on somebody like us.

“And I think that those [customer] organizations that take advantage of the sales partner motion, they have better outcomes as well, faster adoption, more successful projects,” Edwards added, pointing to the complexities around AI solutions as an example.

Telarus has been getting more requests for Front’s product from the distributor’s agents, said Meagan Thai, director of contact center and UC solutions at the Sandy, Utah-based distributor.

“Quite frankly, we were losing opportunities because [agents] could get Front elsewhere, and we didn’t have them in our portfolio,” she said in the interview with CRN. “We didn’t have anyone in our portfolio that can do what Front can do.”

Thai said the need for workflow automation in customer service operations is the big demand driver for Front. “The AI piece is huge these days, but more than anything, it’s workflow automation. They need AI for workflow automation … so they can be more efficient. And the partners were hearing that from their customers,” she said.

“Front expands our portfolio,” Edwards said of the new partnership. “We are opening up for those sales partners a new avenue of solutions and services for them to help enable their customers. This gives our partners the opportunity to put new, additional … and creative solutions in front of their customers.”