A recent article in CRN warned IT resellers that they will face exile from public sector deals unless they make a net zero plan. It’s a good piece and it echoes a recurring theme in discussions amongst channel companies at the moment.
The view within the channel now is it that if you don’t have a net zero and/or decarbonisation plan, you won’t get a look-in on commercial contracts either. And you may have to have a more ambitious date by which you intend to achieve net zero carbon than 2050 – which is the notional deadline that companies bidding for government contracts are supposed to have set.
The problem here might be that it is all very well stating that you have such a goal, but who is going to monitor your progress towards it? Saying it is one thing; doing it is another.
‘Sustainability’ is a term we are going to hear a lot over the next year. But while channel journalists will pick up on anything that looks like genuine and meaningful progress in terms of advancing sustainability and net zero goals by partners, distributors and vendors, they are likely to become quite thick-skinned on the subject fairly quickly.
Everyone will be adopting ‘sustainability’ as one of their PR themes for the year. But to be convincing, they will need really solid, hard-baked evidence that they are doing something meaningful and have a clear and public commitment to making a genuine difference.
Whether you are believed will come down to the sincerity with which you communicate your actions on the subject and the amount of detail and evidence of progress you can provide.
At the same time, channel journalists won’t have time to make in-depth checks on what you tell them (most UK websites have only two or three journalists), so it may come down to whether they really believe you or not. That may depend on how much of a track record you have and how well they know and trust you and your PR people.
Keep up to date with what’s being said in the channel media – visit and bookmark our page at channelstar.co.uk/.
