Services would certainly assume center-stage in the coming years if not totally dominate the revenue stream of IT channels in the years to come. Experts debated the scope of services in the context of box movers and tried to evolve strategies that would help the transition from products to service.
The panel discussion was organized on the occasion of the annual award-giving ceremony of DQ Channels India (DQCI), a leading channels magazine from the house of Cyber Media (India) Ltd. The awards were based on a survey jointly conducted by IMRB and DQCI, which was based on feedback by a number of channel partners.
Panelists at the discussion included Rajkumar Rishi, Country SMB Manager, HP India; Moninder Jain, Manager Marketing, Samsung Electronics India Information & Technology; RK Amar Babu, General Manager (Channels - South Asia), Intel Asia Electronics, representing the vendor side. Ranjan Chopra, MD, Team Computers; Anil Sachdeva, President, Delhi Computer Traders Association; and Rajesh Bakshi, MD and CEO, Netlink Business Systems; from the channels side. The discussion
was moderated by Shyam Malhotra, Editor-in-Chief and Director, Cyber Media Publications.
A number of significant issues emerged from the discussion. One, the transition to services is a long-term strategy and there is no room for short cuts or short-term gains. Sure, short-term opportunities come but that's once in a while. For instance before HP set up office there was an opportunity to service HP printers but that opportunity no longer existed after the company established their presence.
Second, service is a different ball-game altogether. It is about people and their skill-sets. The strategy here is to develop niches and to keep pace with changing technologies and enhancing skill-sets accordingly. One has to see where an opportunity exists before deciding to develop skill sets in that area.
The third issue that the panel tried to address was how to position the service offering. There were many sub-issues to this big question. The biggest challenge here was to get customers to pay for a service that was hitherto free. Many times services come free as a warranty with the product. The challenge here is how to translate that free warranty period into a business relationship where services would now come at a price. In a nutshell, channels have a Herculean task in figuring how to unbundle services from the product and sell it as a separate product.
The panel debated the pros and cons of having a branded service as against being an authorized service provider. One opinion that gained favor was to position the service as a branded product against the global services arm of vendors and not against the products of vendors.
HP emerged as the best vendor on all counts. The company swept the Gold Awards for the second time in a row followed by Samsung for the Silver edging out Intel in the process. Intel won the Silver award for Best Online support. HP and Samsung held first and second position in the following categories: Best Products, Best Marketing Support, Best Post-Sales Support, Best Commercial Terms, Best Relationships. HP also won the gold for Best Online Support.
Speaking about the survey, Bhupendra Mathur, Senior VP & Country Manager, IMRB, said, "The survey was carried across eight cities and included 539 partners. This time we also included attributes to the various categories as a vindication of the choice of vendors."
Some established channel partners who attended the event included Alok Gupta of Softmart Solutions, Bharat Bhushan of RR Systems, Keshav Madhav of Vidur & Co, Manoj Gupta of Fortune Marketing, Rajesh Aggarwal of Micromax Technologies, Sachin Jindal of Bhartiya Electronics, Sanjeev Bhatia of Advantage Computers, Sunil Gupta of Challanger Computers, Saurabh Nagpal of Multilink Computers, Saket Kapoor of Computer Vision, JP Modi of Modi Peripherals, Daljeet Singh and Pankaj Bandlish of Compro Computers, etc. Representatives from the vendor side included Aditya Khemka, CEO and Director of Aditya Group; Sunil Kapoor, Regional Manager of Epson; Sanjeev Krishan CEO of Iris Computers; Pankaj Sharma, Head (IT& Channels Sales) of Sharp Business Systems; Sanjeev Virmani, Area Sales Manager of Logitech Far East Ltd; Ranbir Singh, GM of Wipro
ePeripherals.