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vendors and partners routinely lambast the national distributors for
most of the problems that affect them; while that might be true in
many cases, the fact of the matter is that these NDs are doing many
good things too. Especially, in terms of using new-age technologies
to improve their business performances.
biggies might have suffered in growing top line or are often being
squeezed on margins, but they still play their roles in enhancing the
country's overall distribution dynamics.
Ingram's
B
website for resellers had been a resounding success in improving
transparency and reducing costs of doing both stock sales and
run-rate business. Ingram took a lead on this in the Indian market
and in FY10 30 percent of its business happened through this website.
was a consolidation of the sales organization with an order
processing back office in Chennai making the team structure more
efficient.
on the other hand, has focused on improving distribution process
efficiencies-
Automated Distribution Center (ADC) in Chennai went live and became
fully operational; coupled with its state-of-the-art warehouse
management system this significantly enhanced Redington's
distribution process. There are plans to have these ADCs now in four
metros for which Redington invested about Rs 150 crores. It now plans
to complete the land purchase for the Mumbai ADC by year end and then
commence construction of Kolkata and Delhi ADCs soon sequentially.
Another
good measure done by these big NDs is to get into more niche
products. That might have been done out of necessity-established
volume products no more giving the margins have sort of forced the
hands of these biggies to foray into niche value products. For
Ingram, t
was increasing focus on high value low volume businesses like Adobe,
Autodesk, IBM software, Oracle, Fortinet, Juniper, Symantec, McAfee
and Trend Micro that offered high margins. But it was newer areas
like AIDC, PoS and surveillance that showed great promise with Ingram
signing up a number of niche vendors.
was Redington's diversification into the non-IT business few years
back that has paid off handsomely for it, with the non-IT business
accountingfor 12 percent of its revenues in FY10-a 100 percent
growth since FY09.
Telecom business was the key with the exclusive relationship with
Blackberry retail (especially in the unlocked space) witnessing good
momentum.
Another
good measure has been the increasing penetration of NDs into the
smaller towns and cities. Small towns though were not on the agenda
of companies a few years back but with the passé of time they
have
assumed enough importance for each company to sit up and take note of
its existence. The channels that added tier-2 and tier-3 markets
helped distributors who played their cards well to stay ahead. For
deeper penetration into the C, D, E class channels vote for a
requirement of good strength.
Realising
the importance of these small towns that are growing at 60 percent,
Rashi decided to increase it focus on these towns which collectively
contributes 40 percent to its revenues. Small towns that were not on
the agenda of national distributors a few years back came into focus
in FY10. In FY09, Iris restructured its regional focus by declaring
Delhi NCR as N1 and North India as N2 regions. This enabled the
company in FY10 to penetrate smaller towns like Ludhiana, Chandigarh,
Shimla, Ambala, Jammu better; this reflected in the 25 percent
growth. Realizing the importance of these small towns where markets
were growing faster, Rashi decided to increase its focus there and it
collectively contributed 40 percent to its revenues.