Data Select: Platinum Club is “industry leading”

 MD Fergal Donovan says biggest-ever event reflects distributor’s strength in the market

Data Select has labelled its Platinum Club event as “industry-leading” after the latest conference broke records and introduced a number of firsts.

The 22nd and biggest-ever bi-annual gathering, which has been running since 2007, took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Marlow on March 17.

It attracted 127 resellers and 37 vendors where Data Select updated its partners on its latest developments, growth and plans for the coming months.

Samsung, BlackBerry, Alcatel and Sony Mobile all presented their latest innovations and road maps. There was also an area for vendors to showcase their latest products, as well as specialist zones demonstrating the latest virtual reality, drone and connected home technologies.

Industry-leading
Data Select managing director Fergal Donovan (pictured) said the success of the Platinum Club and improvements made to it over recent years proves it is the industry-leading event in the distribution and enterprise space.

It saw the biggest number of delegates and vendor partners attending and showcasing their latest products, services and technologies in the conference’s near decade-long history.

“I’ve been amazed at the feedback I’ve been given. Even when I wasn’t at Data Select, I knew about Platinum Club. It’s an industry-leading event in the distribution and enterprise space.

“The fact that our partners trust us with a day out from their busy schedules is testament to what we are proving with them.

“Platinum Club is a showcase for what we are doing today, tomorrow and how we want to enable our partners to grow, offer more and, of course, earn more.

“We will now look at how we can increase our service levels in the Platinum Club. These events show how these incentives and initiatives work. Making it more interesting and compelling for our partners is very key for me.”

Vital services
Data Select also offers a number of other services to its partners across a range of segments covering mobile insurance, B2B financing options and device trade-in options (see box below).

Donovan emphasised the importance in today’s market of offering partners more than just mobile handset distribution and labelled the additional services it is able to provide as “vital”.

“These services are vital. We spend a lot of time investing in people, processes and software.

“We successfully launched with Supercover Insurance in December to offer policies, and they now have a number of resellers signed up to that.

“Our finance proposal has been picked up by a lot of our partners. We’re forecasting extreme growth in that platform this year. Trade-in and buy-back continue to go well – we’ve launched individual and bulk now.

“We are investing in plenty of others to ensure we can offer more.”

Speed and agility
Donovan claimed Data Select’s biggest strengths currently are its speed to market, anticipation of emerging technologies and being able to implement them into the channel in a timely fashion.

It is these elements that has seen so many new manufacturers keen to work with it over the past six months with the aim of having the widest portfolio possible for its reseller partners.

Key to this has been its continued focus around the connected home, with Data Select set to launch its own platform to market in the coming months.

“We are fast and agile, and those are the two elements that attracted me to Data Select. We’re very quick with decision making and implementing new technology.

“It’s our job to bring the innovation of tomorrow to our partners as soon as possible. As a Group, we have activities and offices in Hong Kong and China. These people are working on finding that technology and bringing it to us. We want to ensure our partners and customers are at the forefront of technology because that is our role.

“We’ve done a lot of research around the industry and various markets. We’ve had scouts at all the big events, including Mobile World Congress and CES.

“We feel we have done the necessary groundwork to launch now and it looks like we are one of the first to market with them.”