Awake, Arise, Strategize

Systems assemblers may command 60% marketshare in PCs nationally. But
solution providers are going to dominate the market in coming days. This is
because they find favor with vendors as well as customers.

Vendors look at solution providers favorably because the latter sell both
critical elements of an IT solution: hardware and software. This ensures volume
as well as value sales to customers keeping vendors’ cash boxes ringing.

The solution-centric focus of partners helps vendors greatly when it comes to
training the former. It is one thing to train hardware and software resellers
separately and it is totally another to provide wholesome training to one party
that deals with all the technologies needed for a solution.

Vendors know that whoever wants to graduate from the current box-pushing
business or enter the solutions business afresh, should have a long-term vision
and plans to succeed. So, they do not mind investing on the training of solution
providers and their personnel.

From the customers’ side, solution providers are preferred instead of
standalone providers of hardware or software because they want to save on time
and energy by interacting with one single supplier. Clients do not want to get
involved in the passing-the-buck game when a solution put together by more than
one supplier fails to work.

At a time, when solution providers have become the preferred choice of
vendors and partners, it is in their own interest to work out successful
business strategies. It is with this intention that Channels India organized the
Channels’ Champion Conference on ‘Business Strategies for Solution Providers’
on the occasion of presentation of Channels’ Choice Awards for 2004 in Delhi
recently.

The panelists at the Conference came out with several insights that should
help solution providers to work out their strategies to ensure a long-term
profitable business. They were of the opinion that solution providers should
have a right strategy to train their personnel and retain them. Read the full
report on the Conference on page 22.

An interesting question was posed by one of the partners among the audience
to panelists representing vendors whether they would lend a hand to solution
providers in recruiting right technical people. Sanjeev Wad from HP and Anil
Sethi from IBM who were on the panel, were both very positive about supporting
solution providers in their recruitment process.

Solution providers should grab this opportunity in making best use of the
openness shown by vendors in lending a hand in the recruitment of technical
personnel for their needs. A joint recruitment drive will bring down the burden
of solution providers to select the right kind of people for their
organizations.

Training and recruitment of tech-savvy personnel would help both, vendors and
solution providers, since these would be capable of bridging the knowledge gap
at users’ end. This, in turn, would boost the business of solution providers’
whose number is rising by the day.

Sylvester Lobo