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Mandeep Gupta
Country Manager, Channel Business
Emerson Network Power India
The market is getting more sensitive to the evolving needs of businesses. Last year, India was seen as a potential global market, and businesses realized that they needed robust infrastructure to attract and retain investors. For this reason, business critical continuity was viewed as a tool that could help companies gain strategic advantage over their competition.
Key market trends in 2008
With India emerging as one of the strongest markets in Asia, investment kept flowing into the country. This, in turn, created demand for 24x7 support, connectivity and sound infrastructure in order to be able to service international clients to the highest possible standards. It made investment in business critical continuity solutions even more critical.
Shift toward B- and C-class cities. The five cities of Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore have been the largest markets for all kinds of businesses. However, there has been a shift towards B- and C-class cities such as Pune, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Jaipur. These locations are fast becoming global hubs in terms of R&D, BPO, retail and manufacturing, and given the criticality of operations undertaken in these sectors, there has been a growing need for comprehensive business critical continuity solutions.
Growth of the Indian SMB sector. The SMB market is a gold mine waiting to be tapped. 54 percent of the IT spend in the country comes from this segment which is growing at 20 percent per annum. According to IDC, in 2007, there were about 1.7 million organizations that could be classified as SMB or Small Office Home Office (SOHO) set-ups. These organizations spent in the region of Rs 3,400 crore on IT products and services. A lot of them run on a daily revenue generation model, so every transaction is valuable to them. Given the importance of stronger infrastructure, most customers in this segment look for business critical continuity solutions along with reliable hardware protection. The segment thus represents a business opportunity for players who can provide superior technology at an affordable price-point.
Tech trends that drove the market
- Green IT and energy efficiency took precedence
- Increasing online trend
- Shifting from distributed UPS (micro range) toward centralized UPS and hence high KVA UPS
- Customized solutions rather than standard UPS
- Systems integrators getting into the fray
- IT and power sellers getting more integrated
While Indian metros have good power supply, the interiors reflect a different picture. Moving toward the interiors one encounters frequent power cuts on a daily basis, and basic constraints with regard to earthing, cabling and infrastructure. In this context, business critical continuity solutions play a vital role for growing businesses. The new technologies in UPS are aimed at either increasing efficiency or decreasing cost or both.
What does 2009 hold?
Here are a few key tech and market trends that will drive the adoption of IT in the country:
Green IT and energy-saving equipment are the future of business. They not only provide cost benefits, but also help a company contribute to the environment.
Greater use of the Internet to stay connected. Companies with offerings in this space will be preferred vendors.
Service-oriented industry. CRM and service support will play a big role in establishing or strengthening a brand. Vendors with better network and service support will gain prominence in 2009.
Significance of the channel will increase. With the slowdown reaching India, penetration/reach will be the key to winning businesses. Partners will play a greater role in 2009. They will need to be trained more and better to represent the company, and to be able to sell high-end solutions that were so far a vendor’s focus.
More spend on marketing. Vendors will and should spend more on marketing as the time is ripe to build a brand and win business. With the economic slowdown, various innovative ways of reaching the audience and below-the-line activities will gain prominence.
Consultancy approach. Products that can show savings in the long run will be preferred over others. In such a scenario, the vendor will play the role of consultant rather than box-seller.
R&D and innovation. With the economic slowdown hitting India, R&D and innovation will be the focus areas for many companies.
Take-aways for channels
Channels should focus on making the most of the training initiatives provided by companies because the impact of the slowdown will trickle down to all businesses. Organizations with adequate skill-sets will survive the difficult times.
Volume selling. This will help partners to increase their profitability.
Service-oriented approach. Partners should adopt a service-oriented approach to build strong relationships with clients.
Our channel initiatives
Emerson will continue to invest in marketing and product development for partners. Given the success of the Network Solution Partner (NSP) program in 2008, we will continue to invest in NSPs this year and try to double the number. Key programs that we plan to drive this year:
Ease of doing business. We intend to further increase the comfort factor while doing business. The model will comprise activities such as providing pre-sales support, application engineering support, lead generation, sales closure, pricing and channel incentives.
Training. We will continue to concentrate on training our partners and their employees so that they understand technology better and support us with larger mandates. The training will primarily focus on developing product knowledge and selling skills.
Online support. We plan to launch a robust channel portal for all partners to ensure availability of required resources all the time. We will also provide partners with various tools to help them generate quotations based on the customer’s requirements with precise BOM and pricing details.
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