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2001 vs 2009
By Dhaval Valia
These are difficult times. While it’s not the first occasion that the channel is encountering rough economic weather—the last major downturn the tech industry witnessed was the busting of the dotcom bubble—this time it’s different.
The downturn that followed the dotcom bust was centered on the technology industry and hence had a major and prolonged impact on the IT channel. The aftermath of it was severe for the tech industry because enterprise customers stopped buying IT since they had spent excessively on IT during the dotcom boom. Enterprises then spent two years rationalizing the excesses of the Internet bubble while bringing their demand for IT to a standstill.
The present downturn owes its genesis to the failure of the global financial system. It’s primarily an issue of credit and liquidity rather than the lack of desire among enterprises to invest in IT. From several surveys that have been conducted recently, it’s clear that though enterprises will continue to invest in IT, their motivations have changed. Most CIOs are now looking at investing in systems which will help improve cost-efficiency and boost productivity.
And therein lies the opportunity as well as the challenge for tech solutions providers. The opportunity is that customers are ready to invest in IT if you have a solution that they want—one that meets their urgent business objective of achieving cost-efficiencies in this downturn. The challenge is to have or quickly build the capabilities to provide the solutions customers are demanding.
 The high growth of the last five years has spoilt us. Many of us have even forgotten the art of making cold calls, leave aside sitting with customers to understand what their real needs are. Getting back to the fundamentals of business has therefore become a priority. It has to start with meeting your top 10 customers and understanding their pain-points in coping with the downturn. A number of partners have already started doing this and analyzing their customers’ concerns, as is evident from the cover story in this issue, where five leading partners share their strategies for countering the slowdown.
Apart from enhancing customer engagement, these partners are spending heavily on training their staff. While cutting costs wherever possible, they are not compromising on their spends for training or upgrading their skill-sets into areas of technologies their customers are investing in. The IT channel is resilient, and I have no doubt in my mind that it will adapt and innovate during these tough times and come out a winner.
To that end, we hope to help. In the coming months we pledge to pay more attention to new solutions opportunities driven by changing customer needs. We will share more ideas and innovations that will help partners manage the downturn. In this, we need your assistance. Our request to all our readers is to share their innovations with us and thus with the larger channel community. |