Exclusive: Building a Milestone Systems channel in APAC with VP Malou Toft
Two key themes of this year's MIPS 2022 partner summit were "building the new next" and "never fly solo". Both of these topics require one crucial element to achieve successful outcomes, and that's strong channel partnerships.
Milestone Systems is a channel focused business, and this year's invite-only summit highlighted many of the company's successful partnerships and how they have contributed to growth in the VMS market.
TechDay had the opportunity to sit down with APAC VP Malou Toft and discuss Milestone's channel success and plans moving forward towards next year.
Toft attributes much of the success and growth due to the diversity in the APAC market and says that having strong localised expertise and loyal partners will provide better outcomes in the future.
"We are not interested in having 50,000 partners around the globe. It's very simple, in order to scale, we need localised expertise where we go to market and we can do that through our channel."
Toft highlights that it is a significant time of change for the VMS market, and the parameters of use are shifting at all enterprise levels.
"I think we are in some ways at a crossroads, where the need for specialisation within video technology is apparent," she says.
"We need to make sure that the partners commit and really specialise and build that expertise."
Milestone currently services more than 25 countries across APAC today, and Toft says the company is committed to expanding key hubs and focusing on the VMS needs that relate to each one. This also means having flexibility and range.
"What we're doing is working on local presence from our local teams, but at the same time having industry experts that work a little bit more region wide," she says.
"We have both the horizontal and vertical coverage of the different types of customers and go to market models."
Toft also says that Milestone has a very high market share in Australia and New Zealand, and that Australia in particular provides many channel opportunities.
"Some of the use cases we are seeing in the channel network are probably more established than in large parts of APAC, and that gives a company like milestone a real edge," she says.
A new office will soon open up in Brisbane, and besides Australian expansion Toft says New Zealand will also continue to play a continued role in the ecosystem as well even if it isn't yet considered a central hub.
"New Zealand is a very distinct and important market for us. The luxury and privilege of Milestone being a partner driven company is that this actually allows us to have a very, very successful business in New Zealand."
