NACIT Must Have Well-Defined Objectives

Unless
NACIT has well-defined objectives, it can’t aim to reach the heights that have
been attained by MAIT or NASSCOM. Very clearly, the first objective has to be
the cleansing of channel business.

NACIT has to tenaciously work at cleansing channel business to ensure that it
members follow certain processes and procedures for the smooth running of their
businesses.

It is in the absence of these processes and procedures that we see swindlers
having a heyday at the marketplace. Be it at Chandigarh, Pune, Nehru Place or
Lamington Road.

The word, ‘gray business’ should be a bygone. NACIT should bring about
transparency in channel business which would work towards the benefit of the
community.

Next to cleansing, comes fellowship. The channel community need to come
together at the national level to exchange notes on best practices followed by
their members and their success stories.

They need to come together to listen to visionaries who are in a position to
share with them the trends in technologies and business. The objective should be
to bring together the channel community on a common platform to prepare it for
the ever-changing business dynamics of IT.

Dialogue with vendors should be the next objective and not confrontation.
NACIT should aim at creating a win-win situation for both – the channel
community and vendors.

No doubt, partners have lot of grouses against vendors and it is the same
case with the latter against the former. Now that partners have a common
platform, they can forward their grievances to NACIT, which in turn can begin
the dialogue process with vendors.

In fact, now that the channel community has a common voice in NACIT, vendors
should feel comfortable because they have one representative body of partners at
the national level to deal with regarding any issue that may crop up while doing
business with partners.

Next to vendors, representing the channel voice to the Central Government
would be the other main objective of NACIT because so far there was a void here.
The immediate issue that needs to be taken up is the service tax, which has been
been made applicable to maintenance services.

Also, there is a need for the Central Government to clarify several issues on
service tax because the fine print of the notification has lot of gray areas.
NACIT should take up the issue of service tax with the Central Government on an
urgent basis.

Implementaion of VAT too needs to be taken up because VAT has been generally
considered good for business. NACIT should use this opportunity to get rid of
octroi wherever it is being collected in the wake of VAT being implemented.

NACIT should also aim at having continuous dialogue with MAIT and NASSCOM
which have well-established infrastructure. When NACIT is in its infancy stage
with teething troubles, these well-set IT organizations can come handy to
establish firmly an organization that represents the channel community
country-wide.