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Becoming customer-centric
By Dhaval Valia
IBM’s new engagement policy does sound good on paper, though it must be said that IBM’s partners are cautiously optimistic about it. Their caution is understandable because most vendor policies take a different shape and form when they are executed at the ground level.
However our Contributing Editor, K R Nambiar, who conducted several interviews with different product and channel heads of IBM, came away impressed by the fact that the Big Blue is keen to win back channel confidence.
 What impressed Nambiar the most was the candid admission by IBM managers about the mistakes made by the company in dealing with channels over the last 12-15 months.
Such admissions are rare among Indian vendors, and require a lot of courage and conviction on their part. But as they say, the first step to resolving an issue is to admit that there is an issue.
Yet I have a different take on the matter. Whether IBM succeeds or not in implementing the new policy is secondary from the channel perspective. The primary challenge for partners lies in making their business vendor-neutral.
Partners often get emotional about vendor loyalty. Over the years many partners have benefited greatly in business from their exclusive partnerships with certain vendors, and they find it difficult to break that relationship.
I believe it’s time that each one looks at the hard realities of business and does what is best for the company. After all, vendor strategy, contrary to their claims, is not dictated by channels but rather by earnings and stock performance.
If you own the customer, nobody can snatch your pie. And to do so you have to be focused on providing customers the value that vendors are unable to provide.
A customer-centric model is essential for succeeding in the future. This will not happen overnight, and companies have to look at innovative ways of maintaining business continuity, overcoming manpower challenges, and investing in creating strong customer recall.
I remember an analogy that one of the partners gave me about customer-centricity. He said, and I quote, ‘Being vendor-centric is like facing your own goal-posts. If you want to win a football game you need to score goals, and for that you need to be facing the opponent’s goal.’ |