Empowering Crayon: Rhonda Robati’s mana-driven leadership

Crayon Asia Pacific (APAC) executive vice president Rhonda Robati stresses the importance of respect, integrity and situational awareness – qualities she believes channel partners value when leveraging distributor experience in navigating complex technologies.

These values also reflect her personal mana, a concept deeply rooted in her Māori heritage.

Robati stepped into the leadership of the combined organisation following Crayon’s acquisition of rhipe in 2019 and had worked in the channel for a number of years before her role with the distributor.

“Coming together as two companies, which hopefully we’re about to do again, [has] provided us with some great experience in our teams,” she said. “[We will] ensure we’re putting our customers, our partners, our vendors and entire ecosystem first.”

According to Robati, Crayon has a mantra: Sit on the partner and customer side always.

“That’s because I personally have experience in multiple acquisitions, both larger and smaller than either rhipe or the pending potential acquisition,” she said. “For me, it boils down to three things: Communication, collaboration and education.

“Those three things can run the world if you get them right.”

Robati believes that in the channel, it’s important to communicate with integrity.

“If you educate people, which is about transparency, and if you collaborate, then people have a natural tendency to go on a journey with you,” she said. “Humans want transparency, integrity [and] honesty.”

These core values have guided Robati and align with Crayon’s philosophy in every acquisition she has managed, both inside and outside of the distributor.

“People make the difference and in a competitive world,” she said. “When you have that trust, that’s a huge responsibility for every people leader to make sure they continue that pathway of solidifying [it].”

This trust has permeated through to all the companies Crayon works with, noted Robati.

“You have to demonstrate it through a level of expertise and integrity,” she said. “Crayon has really moved from being that traditional distributor because of digital acceleration.

“The industry has accelerated significantly under the digital world.”

Changing face of Microsoft

An example of this is Microsoft’s doubling down on long-term game plan that is shaking up the partner landscape.

Earlier in May, ARN reported the software giant made changes to cloud service provider (CSP) licensing rules, updating the maximum resale price calculation for channel partner agreements. The changes will come into effect in July, impacting all products and volume licensing frameworks.

Microsoft chief partner officer and corporate vice president for global partner solutions Nicole Dezen said at the time these changes would streamline customers when it comes to monthly billing support and its focus on cloud and AI.

Gartner principal analyst Domenico Scriva explained Microsoft products are extremely complex because they’re software-as-a-service products.

Robati said success is no longer about just pushing volume or fulfilling transactions.

“It’s about working with the right partners those who bring real capabilities, deep customer engagement and alignment with Microsoft’s strategic priorities in areas like AI, security and next-gen cloud innovation,” she said.

“For our partners, it’s important to really unpack what is behind these changes.

“They go directly to the performance, capability and impact that Microsoft will seek from its partners of the future.”

She told ARN that Crayon doesn’t “just sell software” and approach it in a consultative way, but brings “in a holistic team … for our partners to help them grow, save money and be able to manage cloud spend”.

“Many distributors have launched their own cloud marketplaces, subscription management platforms. For us, we really accelerate and amplify digital platforms for our partners to end users and customers for ease,” said Robati.

This provides critical expertise which is essential for building trust. It also ensures that the customers and partner can see and feel the support network behind them, she explained.

Distribution done differently

This plays into Crayon’s strategy to go to the market and focus on “distribution done differently”.

“The way to do that is aligning with cloud hyperscalers and that diverse range of software vendors,” she said. “[This] just really accelerates that digital transformation for the customer.

“Distributors have moved from that background logistics role, and we are part of doing it differently… becoming that ecosystem facilitator role.”

According to Robati, this helps partners facilitate and navigate all that is available to them. This ensures, she contained, that the distributor is putting the right expertise, solutions, products and services in place – whether that’s cloud, AI or security tools.

Crayon, Robati noted, will continue to invest in being an ecosystem of growth for its partners versus a transactional enabler.

“That investment has absolutely included tools to help customers procure in a simple, automated way,” she said. “The expertise we’ve invested in from a balance of, or from a lens of, solution specialists … really investing in people who understand the security landscape, people who understand the data and artificial intelligence landscape.”

Robati noted that it was a “heavy investment” into real people that have strong business acumen, that are technically savvy, and even vendor and product savvy.

There’s a lot of “smoke and mirrors” when it comes to experts, she said. After a six-week course, people can suddenly become a “data and AI specialist”.

“The head of our centre of excellence for data and AI in Asia Pacific, to support our channel partners, vendors, and direct customers, was a senior professor at Canberra University,” Robati said. “Teaching data, AI and machine learning and all that comes with that. He joined Crayon several years ago and now he heads up our data and AI practice.

“[With] the depth of experience we have in generative AI, cloud and cyber security, we have the black belts that demonstrates in that deep expertise.”

Her mana

The focus on providing ongoing training for Crayon’s internal people ties back to Robati’s earlier comments about its people-first ethos.

“If you align that to your core values with integrity, leading by example, transparency [and] education, that permeates in everything that we do,” she said. “That’s all about culture and having the mindset of treat someone like you want to be treated.”

This was something that Robati’s dad taught her from a young age.

“If you just have that as your mantra in everything you do, then we know with the exciting evolution of things like data and AI, but also the challenges represented by cyber security,” she said. “If you do that, with your core values at the baseline of everything you do, then not only we as a company, but every single individual, with that trust basis we talked about earlier as well, [can succeed].”

Robati credits her father’s lessons with instilling a mindset of having no boundaries and empowering her to grow up without boundaries on what she could achieve.

Her Māori heritage is family-driven, with the culture deeply rooted in mana, which becomes the core of everything people do and who they are.

“In our culture, we strive to live that mana every single day. Personally, I try to embody this because mana encompasses respect, integrity, and the principle of treating others as you wish to be treated,” she said. “These are values I hold dear and what I look for

“What I believe has impacted my role as a leader is whether my actions align with the words I speak.”

According to Robati, this is what she has observed closely in the leaders around her, from those who report to her directly to the leaders in every company she has worked for, as well as Crayon’s CEO.

“Coming from humble beginnings, you’re often considered less capable. You’re already perceived as someone who won’t amount to much,” she said. “I consider myself fortunate because others saw me as the underdog, so I never had to prove myself.”

While everyone has a story around childhood challenges, Robati said if she had a different mindset she could have taken a very different path to the one, she has today.

“I believed in myself as a human – that belief is part of my mana,” she said. “I believed I was a good person, capable of learning and unafraid to ask questions.

“I’ve always been curious and if I didn’t understand something, like what the stock market was or what cloud computing meant, I would ask.”