Time to repair after-sales service

But, the most serious revelation of this survey is that the third-most
important criterion that channels have rated as important–after-sales service–needs
to be firmed up. Coupled to this is the fact that vendors are lacking in meeting
promised turnaround time.

The fourth DQCI Channel Satisfaction Survey (CSS) - 2003 conducted by IDC
India covered 1,002 partners across all types of channel categories. Key
distributors, resellers, retailers, network integrators, systems integrators,
corporate resellers and assemblers, were all covered in this survey.

The survey was undertaken with a wide geographic cove-rage. Cities that were
covered in the survey are Delhi, Mum-bai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chen-nai,
Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Chandigarh and Lucknow.

The results of the survey were based on 21 micro attributes that nearly
covered every parameter required in the building of a company’s equity through
channel loyalty.

Vendors have to increasingly look at quality, satisfaction and loyalty as
keys for achieving market leadership. Under-standing what drives these critical
elements, how they are linked and how they contribute to a company’s overall
equity is fundamental to success. The 21 micro attributes were fur-ther
evaluated to arrive at seven macro attributes:

• Product quality
• Brand image
• After-sales support
• Marketing support
• Commercial terms
• Relationship manage-ment and
• Online support

Based on the importance and performance of these attri-butes,
the survey arrived at four tactical resource allocations which vendors need to
‘improve, leverage, watch and maintain’.

The DQCI CSS findings say that ‘Technology leadership’,
‘Strong brand positioning’ and ‘Diversity of product range’ is given
high importance by the channel. These are some of the areas which vendors should
always leverage on.

‘Product pricing’ and ‘Point-of-sales material’ are
the two areas where most vendors have maintained high performance. But
considering the fact that these are not very important areas for partners,
vendors should try and maintain it at the present level.

‘Online support’ and ‘Trai-ning/certification’ are
two areas which partners feel to be of low importance, but at the same time have
expressed dissatis-faction. But vendors should remember that as the indu-stry’s
infrastructure improves, these parameters will become an important factor for
growth. Vendors need to keep a watch on these areas.

The most important finding is that vendors should improve on
their ability to provide sati-sfactory repair and replace-ment services with
reduced turnaround time. Obviously, this is a serious issue that vend-ors should
take up immediately.

After-sales service, time and again, has proved to be one of
the most important criteria which decides the fate of any vendor in the long
run. The CSS findings say that vendors have failed miserably in providing the
right after-sales support. Very often, it is the long delay in solving repair
and replace-ment problem. Vendors do required time to authenticate the claim for
repair or replace-ment during warranty. But, in a world flooded with CRM and ERP
offering, it is not difficult for any vendor to streamline handling after-sales
issues.

Call it a gem of information, which vendors can use, the
sur-vey also points out that part-ners are dissatisfied with ‘Trans-parency in
commercial terms and policies’, ‘Richness of online resources offered’,
‘Profit margins’, ‘Promptness of online resources’ and ‘Reward systems’.

If the channel feels that ven-dors are not transparent eno-ugh
in their commercial terms and policies, vendors should remember that they have
set the ground for losing valuable partners.

Absence of transparency in commercial terms could lead to
unsatisfied and disgruntled partners, which eventually will result in changing
of brand loyalty. So it is imperative for vendors to keep partners tactically
happy in all sensitive areas.

DQCI Most Preferred Vendors

The methodology for arriv-ing at the best vendor for each category does not
have any dependence on the calculation of satisfaction scores of ven-dors. A
simple voting was con-ducted to identify the best vendor.

For each product within a category, respondents were asked to
name the best vendor and substantiate it by choosing the strongest reason from a
list of five generic reasons.

For arriving at the best hardware/software vendor, the vendor
bagging the num-ber one position for the maxi-mum number of products within the
category was chosen.

Below is the product-wise analysis of the survey mentioning
the preferred vendor in different product categories:

Branded Desktop PCs: HP topped partner preference, with IBM
as a distant runner-up.

Laptops: HP dislodged IBM’s top position in 2002 to the
leadership position. IBM was the second runner-up.

Servers: In all the three segments–PC, mid-range servers
and high-end serv-ers–HP held the top posit-ion, with IBM following close.

Enterprise Storage Solut-ions: Once again, HP took the
lead with IBM way behind.

Inkjet printers: HP domina-ted yet again, while Canon
came a distant second, oust-ing Epson from the list.

Laser printers: Though HP dominated this space,
Sam-sung was, at second spot, was a tough competitor with its aggressive
marketing campaigns.

Impact printers: TVSE topped the chart with WeP as a
close runner-up.

Multi-Function Devices: HP lead with virtually no
com-petition except Canon, which had a small preference.

Monitors: Samsung was way ahead of LG as the preferred
vendor.

Scanners: HP emerged the clear leader, followed by
Umax on the second spot.

Keyboards: Samsung got the top honors, followed by
Logitech, displacing TVSE which held this position last year.

Mice: Logitech retained its leadership position with
Samsung at the second spot.

Speakers: Mercury conti-nued its domination, with
Creative coming up second.

Hard Disk Drive: Samsung with its three-year warranty
policy was the leader. Seagate, though at the second spot, was not too far.

Optical Disk Drives: Partners preferred Samsung, while
LG was a distant runner-up.

Motherboards: Intel scored for its quality and brand
image. Mercury came in second.

CPUs: Intel was on top, while AMD was miles away.

Sound cards: Creative emerged as the most preferred
vendor, followed by Intex.

Graphics card: Asus took the top spot, followed by
Creative.

Modems/Network interface cards: D-Link emerges as the
most preferred vendor for NIC and hubs, followed by Dax.

Memory modules: Hynix was the most preferred vendor,
followed by Simmt-ronics at a wide gap.

Digital cameras/Web came-ras: Logitech was the leading
choice, followed by Kodak as a distant runner-up.

UPS/CVTs: In branded players, APC continued to lead,
followed by Microtek. Routers/Switches: In this high-end networking category,
Cisco reigned, though it faced close competition was D-Link.

Cable and cabling acce-ssories: D-Link emerged as the
most preferred vendor. AMP got a few votes.

Wireless LAN equipment: D-Link took the preference,
which D-Link followed.

IP telephony equipment: Cisco’s brand image and
expertise gave it the top slot. D-Link was a close second.

Operating Systems/Office Suites: Microsoft was the
only serious choice, despite the hype about Linux.

Security software: Symantec was the best vendor in
this category. There was no second choice.

Database software: Here Microsoft SQL displaced Oracle
as the most preferred vendor.

Storage software: Veritas was the chosen one for its
sto-rage management software expertise.

Networking software: Novell is still the channel’s
best bet for networking software, but Windows NT was not very far.

Accounting packages: Tally continued to be the most
preferred accounting pac-kage. Another lesser-known package, called Fact, also
garnered a few votes for the second spot.

Nelson Johny

Key findings>>>>>>>>>

What macro attributes
reveal?

In the current channel perspective, ‘Product quality’ coupled with
‘Brand image’ plays an important role in partners’ satisfaction with
a vendor. ‘Profit margin’ is the basic necessity for the channel and a
partner would keep only that product which yields desired margins.

Having a quality product with a strong brand image, the channel is assured
that it would move fast and they need not push it. The channel margins are
hit only when a product is not strong on the above two parameters.

Online support neither is
applicable for all vendors, nor is applicable for all partners. With
infrastructure building up, this might become an important attribute in
the future.

What micro attributes
reveal?

Channel partners are tuned to the fact that technology adva-ncement
and redundancy renders more challenge to the IT industry. Hence, they
aptly feel that ‘Technological leadership’ of a product adds quality
to a product. For them a quality product also should be user-friendly and
a good quality brand should have the complete range available in its
basket.

‘Strong brand’
positioning by a vendor not only helps create awareness and pull for the
brand in the market, it reduces pressure on the channel in selling the
product. A good brand image also helps the channel to churn out good
profit margin. Partners also feel that it adds to their prestige to have a
renowned brand in their kitty.

While in ‘Marketing
support’, the partners feel that vendors should undertake joint
advertising along with them. Vendor ability to provide satisfactory
service is also one of the key issue for partners.

Survey Methodology>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

IDC India used the
IT-Channels Satisfaction Measurement Model (ICSM) to arrive at the
results. The model lends more accuracy to satisfaction measurement by
factoring in the importance that respondents attach to each criterion used
for evaluation.

The entire survey was
undertaken in three distinct stages.

Stage I: Qualitative pilot stage

Stage II: Fieldwork

Stage III: Analysis and interpretation

Stage I

 The most important stage in
the entire survey and involved qualitative discussions with sample
resellers.

These discussions with the different people in partner organizations
helped in assessing the channel requirements, how they are met in today’s
scenario and what are their latent expectations.

This exercise helped in
evolving the model, the generic set of micro and macro attributes that
could be used for measurement of satisfaction across product and channel
categories.

The sampling, based on
channel type, was also completed in this stage.

Stage II

In this stage, a field-briefing session was organized where the entire
questionnaire was discussed and mock interviews were arranged. A proper
coverage plan was also made, based on the location of each responding
customer.

Personal interviews were
carried out face-to-face with eligible respondents. For an unbiased
evaluation of performance, the name of DQCI was revealed to the
investigators.

Stage III

The questionnaires, after proper scrutiny, was entered into database
format. The database was cross-checked for consistency and quality. The
database after this stage, was analyzed in relevant software to get the
output.

After analysis of the
output tables, the data was studied and interpreted to deliver answers to
the questions set as objectives.