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Follow UsFrom an overall Indian UPS market perspective, the last few years have seen the industry going through a consolidation phase, as MNC brands have been on the prowl to acquire home grown UPS players. The subsequent ripple effect of this consolidation within the channel has also started paying off for the UPS vendors, as it allows the channel to offer best of both worlds (MNCs as well as local brands) to their customers.
Even the channel satisfaction survey has seen three of the large MNCs garnering the maximum allegiance of the partners, leaving the smaller Indian brands way behind. Albeit, within these MNCs, allegiance shift annually and so in 2014 an Emerson is the most popular while APC/Luminous (winner in 2013) has slipped to #3 this year. Numeric has gained the maximum-from #5 the year before to #2 this year. Indian brands like Microtek and Uniline do not seem to inspire much enthusiasm amongst channel partners.
While most MNC vendors followed a similar strategy, what helped Emerson most was the way it attacked the market with cutting edge offerings, high on channel profitability with special incentives and festive schemers for channel with proactive after -sales support. Even on the product quality fronts and marketing support fronts, Emerson inspires confidence in the channel fraternity.
Emerson also scored high with its aggressive channel marketing. It ran schemes like Excitement Unlimited channel incentive scheme for its Network Solution Partners (NSPs) and Value Added Resellers (VARs) and many others to win the faith of channel. The highest endorsements for Emerson though came for its back-end incentives and their settlements, allocation of funds for marketing by partners and availability of its point of sales materials.
The French MNC Numeric seems to be particularly strong in the South, though it seems to have takers amongst the channel across the country for its consistency and effectiveness of communication with channel partners, its consistency in honoring commitments made to the partners and even with its strong online support and resources made available to partners.
What helped Schneider Electric were parameters like ‘overall product quality' consisting of technological leadership of the product, price vs performance ratio and overall product reliability. Besides driving global innovation into India, Schneider Electric is also developing an India-for-India approach to meet unique customer demands, create competitive pricing and offering to customers and beat competition in the IT market.
Furthermore, Schneider (APC) has left its competitors behind in providing after-sales support to its channel partners. The company's account managers/help desk services are both competent and always reliable for providing any kind of assistance to the partners. It was also very prompt in stock replacement along with providing services in every nook and corner of the country.
In terms of price-performance and product range, Microtek was regarded as the second-best. On after sales support, relationship management and commercial terms, Microtek saw strong competition coming from the MNCs ultimately leading it to slip behind.