IT PANCHAYAT UDAIPUR : “Vendors should do away with national distis”

The IT Panchayat, which is organized by The DQ Week and DQ Channels, reached
the city of lakes-Udaipur last week. The event which saw participation from 50
partners of the city was sponsored by Gigabyte, Emerson and GoIP.

The event started with Suniel Kumar, Area Manager, Gigabyte telling the
partners about their product offerings and was followed by a Girijesh Mishra,
NSM, GoIP explaining the intricacies of their product line. This was followed by
an open house discussion with the partners.

Pavan Kothari of Ficusa Enterprises said, “The partners were hoping that the
setting of the DGS&D contract rates would help provide some stimulus to the
business, but with the elections being declared and the code of conduct now in
place, that has been postponed and as a result the partners are witnessing a
decline in sales.”

Channel partners engrossed in the open house discussion

“With people being careful while spending, and it being the exam season, no
sales is being generated from the student community; this has lead to a
considerably little walk-in. In fact many partners in the city have shut down
their retail operations and are now concentrating solely on box pushing,”
remarked a partner. When inquired he said that all retail sales have moved to
the big LFRs like Croma etc, and that the general perception was that you would
get a better deal. Talking about the solution for vendors to make inroads and
get more business, and for the partners to survive, Kothari suggested to adopt
the regional distributor model instead of going in for national distributors.

Elaborating about the advantages of having a regional disti model, he further
said, “The reason why this model will be more beneficial for the vendor is that
partner loyalty is enhanced.”

Elaborating further Anil of Parishram said, “When we do business with
national distributors, we have no direct contact with the vendor. The national
disti on the other hand is only interested in their business and are not worried
about our problems. Take for example the issue of DoA. It is one of the single
biggest issue with all the vendors but no one is willing to bring out a clear
policy on it or set a process which can be easily followed. Such instances
negatively affect a partner when both vendor and disti both wash their hands off
it. In this situation, how can one expect loyalty from partners; so tomorrow if
some other company comes, we are not hesitant in switching over to them.”

Citing the instance of Dell, most partners felt that their business model was
conducive for growth of the business and profits for channel partners. When
asked about how Dell was doing in the city, “Since there is no previous growth
or sales figures available it is difficult to tell in terms of number, but it
can be easily said that Dell is slowly and steadily inching towards becoming the
number one vendor in laptops segment. The brand is very stylish and though it is
a bit more expensive than the other's available in the market but people still
want it. Dell's business model ensures that the partner registers good growth,”
said another partner who is a Dell dealer in the city.

Ajay Chawla from Ingram Micro and Virendra Singh from Neoteric represented
the national distributors and mingled around with the partners listening to
their queries.