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Tier-2 SIs learn the tricks of tender business

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DQW Bureau
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The fact that government is one of the largest IT buyers is fast becoming an
open secret. And so unsur-prisingly, one can see a good chunk of channel
partners getting aggressive on tapping this opportunity, which gets routed
through tendering processes. This is in sharp contrast to the scenario that
existed two-three years ago.

Given the complex nature of tendering business, only tier-1 SIs like Wipro,
HCL or CMS would put their hands into it. Now many tier-2 SIs have also joined
the fray and are fast learning the tricks to make their presence felt in the
cor-ridors of government decision-makers. And they also realize that just being
L1 (lowest bidder) isn’t good enough to bag a tender deal.

There
are two ways in which SIs undertake this

One: They directly
build a good rapport with right personnel across these government
departments, which ensures that they are the first one to know if an IT
project is getting sanctioned.

Second:
They work closely with consultants, who advise government on
what to buy and when to buy.

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"Given the huge opportunity, it only made sense for us to understand the
modalities of tendering business and fast adapt to the complex require-ments it
presents," remarked Bimal Raj, CEO, Allied Digital Services. One of the
first things that SIs like Allied are doing is to ‘rightly sense the IT
require-ments’ across key government accounts.

There are two ways in which SIs undertake this. One, they directly build a
good rapport with right personnel across these government depart-ments, which
ensures that they are the first one to know if an IT project is getting
sanctioned.

Second, they work closely with consultants, who advise government on what to
buy and when to buy. As Dharmesh Anjaria, Director, Dynacon, puts it, "The
chain of people one uses for customer contact should be really good and
reliable."

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Next comes the most signi-ficant aspect of proactive app-roach. SIs are
quickly realizing that instead of waiting for the tender to get floated it makes
more sense to proactively approach the department with your own proposal. After
all, when the need is there, and you have built a relationship, there’s no way
your business offerings would not be looked at. "This approach should be
more of a consulting and evangelizing nature," added Raj.

Many a SIs confirmed that even before the tender is floa-ted, they try and
initiate dialo-gue with concerned authorities about what solution will best meet
their IT needs and how they can be the ideal provider of the same. In all this,
the number of projects an SI has undertaken and the kind of certified staff it
has comes into play. "This is the most crucial stage as far as winning
custo-mer’s confidence is concer-ned," informed Harish Shetty, MD, Binary
Systems.

And last, comes the ‘specs’ activity. Something, if done smartly can
completely tilt the order in a particular SI’s favor. What ‘specs’
activity means is that SIs wanting to bid for a particular tender not just talk,
but also try to convince the con-cerned authorities about what should be the
right kind of specs for different equipments.

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And this can go a long way in ensuring that it’s them, who bag the order.
How? "Imagine If an HP business partner is pitted against an IBM business
partner over a tender deal for a PC and server installation, all that the IBM
partner needs to do is to get a proprietary feature of an IBM machine added as a
must in the spec requirement. This way there’s no way the HP partner can
compete on the bid," illustrated an SI.

"It is the criteria for elimina-tion instead of selection that can work
for or against an SI," quipped Raj. And considering the fact that the days
of closed tendering are quite over and there’s a two percent budge-tary
allocation for IT in every state government as well as good funds at the central
level too, just being L1 isn’t good enough any more.

Goldie

(CyberMedia News Service)

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