The Channel Darlings Read The Latest DQ Channels Satisfaction Survey

A few days back DQ Channels, the sister publication of The DQ Week conducted a Channel Satisfaction Survey to gauge how the partners are rating the different vendors for various hardware and software products and services. While the results would come out next week and subsequently in The DQ Week too, I am sure many of you have been respondents to the survey.

You people are the lifeline of the Indian IT industry and your feedback in such surveys portray the real health of the IT industry. That is because the study covered over a span of 20 cities amongst distributors/resellers and solution providers. Therefore, the importance the vendors attach to this survey is evident from the way they were trying to get in touch with the journalists involved to find out their rankings and positions. One of the largest vendors even admitted that the rankings could make or break their business.

This shows the real might and clout the channel partners enjoy and the impact they can have on the Indian IT market. But as Spiderman proclaimed "With great power, comes greater responsibility", I am sure the channel partners are also maintaining every caution they could have with vendors and not taking a confrontational stance at every given opportunity.

Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating that partners should lie down and not protest any unfriendly policies or practices of vendors, or either as an association or on individual capacity not take on vendors on specific issues. But there has been a worrying tendency off late to hold vendors at ransom at the smallest of provocations; or sometimes associations resort to virtual 'blackmail' by means of boycotting or banning a product in a particular region. Unless there is not a problem of serious magnitude, partners should desist from such militant stance and rather try to sort out the problems through negotiations and discussions.

As the results of the survey show, the dynamics of channel satisfaction is changing with the times. Gone are the days when partners used to remain satisfied with basic minimum level of services from vendors. They want vendors to offer highest quality of satisfaction at all levels of their relationship with the vendors-sales and marketing, after-sales support, delivery, installation, products/services, post sales service, commercial terms as well as relationship management. Partners are now asking for support in the medium they want (online, mobile etc.) and at the time they want. 24X7x365 is something which has become the norm rather than exception.

E-commerce seems to be a seriously growing threat to the existence of many of the channel partners and system integrators. While a few of them are joining in the bandwagon, most still are at a loss to understand their future courses of action. Unfortunately, a few unable to sustain themselves are completely leaving the IT business. While this year's Channel Satisfaction Survey has not put forward questions related to e-commerce, I am sure that in future it would dominate the relationship between partners and vendors.

The vendors who were rated highly, after such discerning and threadbare analyses by the partners, are therefore really those who are doing great work and deserve all the praise they can get. DQ Channels believed that ab ki baar it is the time of the winning vendors and I seriously believe that they will usher in the aachhe dins for the IT industry.

(rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in)