By Dhaval Valia, CRN, Dec. 11 2008, 1500 hrs
In response to the economic slowdown, HP India, along with SAP India, has rolled out a program that will help its partners target opportunities in what the company calls the ‘white space’ segment.
White space segment is defined by HP as family-run companies with turnover ranging from Rs 50 crore to Rs 400 crore that have little or no significant reliance on IT.
“Our aim with the new program is to create markets. We have collated a comprehensive database of 9,000 such companies in 33 cities who have literally no IT exposure so far. We have rolled a comprehensive go-to-market strategy in alliance with SAP for tapping the vast opportunity in the white space. We expect these white space accounts to invest in IT despite the slowdown,” said Ashok Pamidi, Director, Enterprise Partners, HP India.
The company has activated 3 to 4 partners in each of the 33 cities it plans to tap the white space segment in. “The approach we are taking is not to talk about IT to these companies at all. We, in fact, talk to their owners about how they can improve their business efficiency and productivity by improving systems and processes. And this approach is working well as many owners know nothing about IT but are keen to improve their business and profitability,” opined Pamidi.
For this, the company has put in place a strong marketing and lead generation program. “We are providing our partners with all pre-sales tools and have created a strong lead generation mechanism in triangulation with SAP and on almost a weekly basis, are talking to our white space partners on the progress made,” explained Pamidi.
In light of the current credit squeeze in the market, Pamidi also said that HP was working at making its financial services arm more aggressive in providing various financing options to customers and partners. “We realize that there exists a credit squeeze in the market and in such a scenario our financial services arm is gearing to play a crucial role,” informed Pamidi.
According to Pamidi, HP is still confident of 20-25 percent growth for the IT industry. “If you look at the server or the storage business we are seeing substantial growth, which goes on to suggest that customers have not stopped investing in core IT infrastructure. Usually during tough times, companies are known to invest more in IT as it provides productivity gains and business efficiencies,” he averred.
Pamidi also disclosed that HP will get more broad-based with its partner training programs. “Over the next 12 months, our aim is to include more partners and their executives in our training program. This year, we will be conducting our training in more cities than last year and will also increase the frequency of our basic-level training programs,” he said. |