If internal processes are taking time away from customers and growth, you're not alone. Complexity can build quickly across partner and vendor organisations alike, making it harder to focus on the activities that create the greatest value
In this episode of Westcon Edge Talks, Viktoria Szindekovics and Dave Garwood speak with Boris Germashev, VP EMEA Channel at Extreme Networks, about reducing unnecessary complexity, strengthening partner-vendor alignment, and developing solutions customers genuinely value.
Key takeaways
Keep customer value at the centre
Processes, frameworks, and reporting all have a role to play, but they should support customer and business outcomes rather than become objectives in themselves.
One useful question to ask: "Will customers care?"
Or, as he put it, “Will that move the needle on the customer side at least a bit?" Before investing in a new process, initiative or programme, it's worth considering how it will ultimately benefit customers and support the outcomes you're trying to achieve.
Create more capacity for growth
Dave Garwood shared a number worth sitting with:
"Reporting is definitely an area that we spend a lot of time feeding back. We spend a good, you know, at least 20% of our time doing that, I think, so we could definitely cut back on doing that area."
Boris added that AI can help here. Instead of spending a year building a complex integration or process, you can use it to get somewhere useful in two weeks, check whether it's helping customers, and move on if it isn't.
Align around shared outcomes
The strongest partner-vendor conversations start with a clear understanding of the customer's challenge, the partner's opportunity, and the role the vendor can play in delivering the desired outcome.
Partners that stand out are the ones that understand how they create value, why customers choose them, and how technology supports that strategy. That shared understanding helps both sides focus on opportunities that can be repeated, scaled, and sustained over time.
Build differentiation through a creator mindset
This was the standout idea of the episode:
"The best partners are actually creators by themselves. They should have that creator mentality. They should create things. And vendors should be the source of some infrastructure, some products, ideas, but at the end, the end result, which customers are buying, that should be created by the partner."
Creators go beyond just resell pre-packaged vendor products. They blend technologies, build unique solution ecosystems, and wrap managed services around them to solve a specific customer problem. That's what builds deep trust and makes a partner hard to replace.
Dave added that what he sees in the best partners is that the customer trusts them implicitly: "you can see they've got their belief in them."
Wrap up
The message from episode two is straightforward: simplify where possible, align around meaningful customer outcomes, and focus on creating value that extends beyond individual transactions.
For partners, the opportunity is not simply to take technology to market, but to shape it into distinctive solutions that customers understand, trust, and continue to value over time.
The conversation: Boris Germashev on cutting complexity
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Viktoria Szindekovics: What do partners spend too much time on that adds very little value?
Boris Germashev: It sounds like a simple question, but it's probably not. Every partner is a commercial organisation, so whatever doesn't bring financial benefit, you might ask: why do they do it? And in many cases, it's self-inflicted administrative burden. When partners think they need to change, they create committees and tiger teams and processes and frameworks. It's basically red tape, sold internally as "we're embarking on a strategic journey of change." But the activities are inward focused, administrative in nature, and created to serve some internal purpose. Customers wouldn't care. Customers wouldn't spend more with them because of it. And it's not only partners—the same happens on the vendor side too.
Viktoria Szindekovics: It's true. And I think there are quite a few tasks that can be automated as well. That can remove some of the admin burden you mentioned, so you can focus more on sales, operations, even marketing. It's becoming more data-driven, so we have more time to focus on what really matters. Okay great, on to the second question: If you had to remove one thing from the typical partner-vendor relationship, what would it be?
Boris Germashev: It's related to the previous question. Everything that isn't ultimately influencing the financial result—you have to ask why you're doing it. Sometimes you're in a discussion and it feels really disconnected from the real world. No relationship to the market, to the verticals, to customer buying behaviour, to customer issues. That's what needs to be removed. And it's usually related to complexity—complexity of processes, complexity of tools. I think everyone can cut a lot more on the reporting side and focus more on execution and strategic shifts.
Dave Garwood: Reporting is definitely an area where we spend a lot of time feeding back. We spend at least 20% of our time doing that, I think, so we could definitely cut back. And I think we also tend to be very focused on the immediate opportunity, when we should be looking a bit further out at more strategic, longer-term opportunities as well.
Boris Germashev: What you mentioned, Dave, is natural—if you have a business need right now, you need to satisfy it. But the question is, who has capacity to think about strategic change? The art of balancing tactical versus strategic is really, really difficult. And what we need to remove is the admin burden that replaces strategic thinking. What are we actually doing in three to five years? How do we earn money? What will customers want from us? That's where the focus should be.
Viktoria Szindekovics: I like that as well. Be more intentional and, as you said, just look ahead—not just now. We can always adjust our strategy as we go along, take calculated risks. Great, next question: What's the quickest way for a partner to get your attention for the right reasons?
Boris Germashev: Be business-minded, not process-minded. The people who get my attention actually understand why they're employed by the partner, what they want to achieve, what the future of the partner looks like, how they earn money, and what business problem they're trying to solve. And then it's clear why they need us, why they serve these customers, and what our problem is too. You cannot imagine—and it sounds trivial—how many people inside commercial organisations have no idea what their organisation is really doing. How they earn money. Why customers come to them and not to the competition. So when you meet people who do understand that, it really is key.
Dave Garwood: Yes—and it's got to be a repeatable opportunity, not just opportunistic. It's got to be something they feel can grow and scale over time.
Viktoria Szindekovics: As you said, it should be a give and take. Also, when we come up with an initiative, we try to make it relatable as well—what problems it solves—and the partner gets it straight away. It shouldn't be too complicated, because then they just don't want to look at it. They have a hundred other things or partner programmes to look at. Where do you think the industry is over-engineering channel programmes?
Boris Germashev: It depends where you look from. From the partner side, if you're managing 200 vendors, you have 200 partner programmes with different tools, KPIs, and setups. That's where the complexity comes from, not necessarily from any individual programme. But in general, programmes that are too focused on the controlling side—demanding too much rather than rewarding success—are the problem. Partners should be really mindful of their vendor landscape. Sometimes less is more. Simplification will only come from the partner side, by choosing the right vendors to work with.
Dave Garwood: I see examples from other vendors where rebate structures are so complex you almost need to be a scientist to understand how it works. If you have to explain it six times, that's a problem. Rebates are really important for partner profitability, but if the structure is that complicated, it defeats the purpose.
Boris Germashev: Exactly—it's an inward focused, admin-heavy process. They didn't ask: will partners care? Will this actually bring value to anyone? Or will it just mean partners spend days trying to calculate their margin?
Viktoria Szindekovics: Just following on from your statement about reseller versus partner—it should be more transformational, not transactional. When you create something, it will last longer than just a quick revenue-grabbing opportunity. When you create something, you can scale it, and partners and customers will trust it, and they know why it's good for them. What's something the best partners do that can be captured in a scorecard or partner tier?
Boris Germashev: It's good that we use the term "partner" and not "reseller." Some partners feel they are partners—they think the vendor should create the product or solution and they just resell it. But the best partners are actually creators by themselves. Vendors should be the source of infrastructure, products, ideas—but the end result, what customers are actually buying, should be created by the partner. And it's really hard to capture on a scorecard. You can measure some things—how much managed services a partner sells, how many multivendor environments they're serving. But the real thing is that creators build something unique for the customer. They blend different technologies, maybe some outsourcing, and create something that is unique for that specific customer and their specific situation. That's what binds you to the customer. So I think the best partners are creators.
Dave Garwood: What I see in the best partners is that the customer trusts them implicitly. Wherever they guide them, you can see the customer believes in them. They're building services and wrapping them around the technology. That trusted advisor relationship, combined with great technology, is a winning formula. Trust isn't something you can measure on a score from one to ten, but you can see it when you speak to partners and watch them with their end users.
That's a wrap on episode two. The message is clear: cut the self-inflicted complexity, keep customers at the centre, and think like a creator rather than a reseller. Do that, and you'll build a business that's genuinely hard to replace.
Keep an eye out for the next episode in the series.
