DCC September Regular issue

September 2010 | Rs. 50

Vol 2 Issue 20 | A 9.9 Media Publication

November 2009

SPECIAL CHANNEL EDITION

CHANNEL SCHEMES

FOR THAT

LITTLE

EXTRA As vendors turbo-charge the channel this festive season, partners feel that schemes should be more innovative and inclusive

Collaboration

How new communication tools make it happen PAGE 16

Cover Sept_10.indd 1

CRM’s Next Wave Avoiding the pitfalls to reap its benefits PAGE 20

Data Quality

Why it matters so much in business intelligence efforts PAGE 24­­­­

9/10/2010 7:08:29 PM

editorial

Is Security on Our Mind?

T sanjay.gupta@9dot9.in

India may have topped the list of countries producing viruses, but awareness of security among users is very low

his month, India earned the dubious distinction of becoming the top virus-producing country in the world. According to a report

by Network Box, a managed security company, India is now responsible for 13.7% of the globe’s viruses, up from 9.5% in July. (Russia and USA are second and third on the list, accounting for about 11% and 8% of viruses.)

Ironically, India must also be a country where the penetration of security solutions is among the lowest – thanks to the extremely low awareness of and sensitivity to the critical issue of information security.

Most of the SMBs and many of India’s large enterprises are either blissfully unaware of the serious threats posed by viruses, worms, phishing scams and internal breaches or they have chosen to ignore them. And among end users, awareness levels are abysmally low.

Bar ring the spurts of panic that grip our outsourcing industry whenever a security breach happens, the majority of companies in India think of implementing security tools and technologies as something far beyond the horizon. “We’ll cross the bridge when we come to it,” goes the conventional – and convenient – thinking.

What is it that lurks behind such flawed thinking? In my opinion, most Indian businesses still run parallel manual systems or are in the midst of migrating to an IT-driven scenario. Another reason is that they are unwilling to budget for security

beyond an occasional firewall or anti-virus package. They are not at all accustomed to provisioning holistically for a secure enterprise-wide system.

As for end users, most make do with freeware or, worse, pirated anti-virus. Again, the mental block against ‘paying for software’ is at play. Another factor is that e-commerce is still miniscule and ‘identity theft’ and ‘online privacy’ are largely alien concepts in India.

No one can deny, however, that things will have to change. As computer and Internet proliferation grows, so will the security threat.

That’s why the potential for security solutions, both for vendors and partners, is tremendous. What they must do before orders start pouring in, however, is educate and convince end users as well as businesses to change their thinking on security. It took a few bomb blasts for Indian civic authorities to wise up to surveillance, but there’s no reason why businesses should wait for a series of grave online security attacks before taking corrective action.

SANJAY GUPTA Editor Digit Channel Connect

sounding board sounding board

Collaboration

How new communication tools make it happen PAGE 16

CRM’s Next Wave

Avoiding the pitfalls to reap its benefits PAGE 20

Data Quality

Why it matters so much in business intelligence efforts PAGE 24­­­­

Write to the Editor E-mail: editor@digitchannelconnect.com Snail Mail: The Editor, Digit Channel Connect, B-118, Sector 2, Noida 201301

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Rakesh Jain, CEO, Supreme Computers: “Schemes offered by vendors offer various value propositions in terms of bundled gifts, travel trips and freebies, which include items like cars and gold. The approach now taken by vendors is that of a win-win situation for both themselves and their partners instead of just pushing stocks.”

n

Sanjay Yadav, Country Head, Retail, Dell India: “Since partners want promotional schemes which are more saleable, we try to put new products as incentives/rewards. In our attempt to make channel see new technologies and products which are exciting and expensive, we try and make the channel experience the same through partner schemes.”

n

Amit Saraf, Director, Wian Solutions (Bangalore): “It’s only the big partners who remain entitled to benefit from these [channel] schemes. For someone like me who does an annual business of close to Rs20 lakh – I’m not the partner a vendor is looking at with these schemes. Often, the target slabs will be too high for small partners to qualify.”

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contents

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SEPTEMBER 2010 Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Publishing Director: Vikas Gupta

CHANNEL SCHEMES

FOR THAT

EDITORIAL Executive Editor: Sanjay Gupta Copy Editor: Akshay Kapoor Sr. Correspondent: Payal Pruthi (Bengaluru)

LITTLE

EXTRA

DESIGN Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK Manager Design: Chander Shekhar Sr. Visualisers: PC Anoop, Santosh Kushwaha Sr. Designers: Prasanth TR, Anil T, Anoop Verma & Joffy Jose Designer: Sristi Maurya Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

As vendors turbo-charge the channel this festive season, partners feel that schemes should be more innovative and inclusive

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SALES & MARKETING VP Sales & Marketing: Navin Chand Singh (09971794688) National Manager - Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623) National Manager - Channels: Krishnadas Kurup (09322971866) Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai: Vinodh K (09740714817) Delhi: Lalit Arun (09582262959) Kolkata: Jayanta Bhattacharya (09331829284)

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BUILDING THE EPSON BRAND

Samba Moorthy from Epson talks about the company’s positioning in the Indian market

WINNING MINDSETS David Lim, leadership coach, shares team and leadership insights from the 2010 Soccer World Cup

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THE NEXT WAVE

To prepare for a new CRM wave, it’s important to learn from the mistakes and pitfalls of its early years

OTHERS EDITORIAL.......................................................... 02

BRAND COMMUNICATION General Manager: Ankur Agarwal Asst Brand Manager: Arpita Ganguli CHANNEL CHAMPS Sr Coordinator Events: Rakesh Sequeira Events Executives: Pramod Jadhav, Johnson Noronha, Suyog Thakur Audience Dev Executives: Aparna Bobhate, Shilpa Surve PRODUCTION & LOGISTICS Sr. GM Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh, Mohd. Ansari, Shashi Shekhar Singh Published, Printed and Owned by Nine dot Nine Interactive Pvt Limited. Published and printed on their behalf by Kanak Ghosh.

Published at:

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE................................... 24 TRENDS.............................................................. 28 ANALYST SPEAK................................................. 36

16

THE POWER OF COLLECTIVES

Enterprises are warming up to the benefits of new communication tools that engage audiences non-hierarchically

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Nine dot Nine interactive Pvt Ltd Kakson House, A & B Wing, 2nd Floor,80 Sion Trombay Road, Chembur, Mumbai- 400071 INDIA.

advertisers index Iomega............................................................Back Cover Seagate.......................................................................IFC Digilink....................................................................... IBC Rashi Peripherals.............................................................1 Compuage......................................................................3 iBall..........................................................................5, 33 Fenda.............................................................................7 Epson.............................................................................9 Western Digital.............................................................13 Jupiter..........................................................................15 Gigabyte.......................................................................17 India AntiVirus..............................................................19 Supertron......................................................................21 Abacus.........................................................................23 Quick heal.....................................................................25 Pushpam.......................................................................27 Busy Infotech................................................................29 Sakri IT Solution............................................................35

Printed at: SilverPoint Press Pvt Ltd D- 107, MIDC, TTC Industrial Area, Nerul, Navi Mumbai- 400706 Editor: Anuradha Das Mathur Bunglow No. 725, Sector - 1 Shirvane, Nerul Navi Mumbai - 400706

COVER DESIGN: ANOOP VERMA

SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:39:15 PM

vendor speak

“OUR CHANNEL PARTNERS HAVE HELPED US BUILD THE EPSON BRAND” – Samba Moorthy, Senior General Manager, Sales & Marketing, Epson India

Moorthy shares with Payal Pruthi Epson’s positioning in the Indian market and the plan to consolidate its partner base to help existing partners sell better DCC: You have been with Epson for quite some time. How has your own role changed over the years and what’s top priority for you at the moment?

I joined Epson India in January 1996. In the early days, I was instrumental in setting up and building the Point of Sale (POS) and projector businesses for Epson and for actually creating an industry where none existed earlier in India. Also, heading the dot matrix printer business and taking Epson from 3rd place and 24% market share to becoming the market leader and 55% market share has been particularly gratifying.

In the years when we were struggling to build the business in India, establishing clear and visible guidelines for smooth and sustainable business operations were a key focus for me. Today, the task is different. We are at an inflection point today and on our way to becoming a Rs. 1000 crore company in the next few years.

Sustained growth is the order of the day. My task is to drive the strategies and execution now for this sustained growth.

DCC: Epson enjoys a significant market share in dot-matrix printers. Do you think there will be ample scope for growth in this segment?

The fact is that the dot matrix segment, while not growing, is not declining either. As long as there are high volume printing requirements at low costs and with high reliability, dot matrix printers will have a market.

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Segments like banking, insurance, government, retail continue to buy and use dot matrix printers. We have been growing our sales by capturing more market share. Today, our market share stands at 55%, up from 30% a few years ago.

DCC: Even though Epson is a worldwide leader in projectors, the brand recall and share in the Indian market is not on a par with that. What is your take on this?

I believe this is an incorrect perception. The fact is that Epson is the No. 2 projector brand in India as per IDC in 2009. This is in a product category with over 30 brands vying for a piece of the pie. Our market share was 12.1%. The market leader had a share of 12.4%. As you can see, the difference between the 1st and 2nd position is marginal.

DCC: What is Epson’s positioning in the photo and laser printer market?

We enjoy close to 60% market share in the photo segment and it continues to remain an important segment for us.

Lasers have not been a focus area for us for the last few years because we did not have the right product mix to offer the market. Having said that, we now have some very good products ready for the market. Some of these are already available and we are seeing a good response.

We will approach the market in a planned, cautious and systematic way going forward.

DCC: How has your channel partner

We are at an inflection point today and on our way to becoming a Rs. 1000 crore company in the next few years.

We have just completed an nSolution Partner programme which reached out to SI’s to tell them how Epson products can be used to grow their business.

Our aim is to be a Rs. 1000 crore company by 2015.

Our efforts on all fronts are geared towards achieving this goal.

network expanded in recent times?

Any key initiatives in the current year?

We cur rently have about 190 tier 1 partners whom we call Epson Authorised Par tners (EAPs). We then have about 4000 tier 2 partners whom we call Epson Certified Channel (ECCs). We also have about 1,000 SIs doing business with us. In recent times, more than expansion, our focus has been on consolidation.

Our effort is to help our existing partners sell better. Towards this end, we are taking several initiatives. We have just completed an nSolution Partner programme which reached out to SIs to tell them how Epson products can be used to grow their business. Our nDimension Partner programme this year, starting in September, targets 100 cities through its outreach programme; so even partners in small towns in remote areas are exposed first hand to the possibilities that Epson brings to them.

DCC: Moving forward, what are your growth plans?

Last year, Epson grew 28% and closed the year with a turnover of Rs400 crore. It was a fantastic year for us in the midst of a so called recession. This year, we hope to grow equally, if not faster. Already the first quarter has been stupendous for us with close to 35% growth. Our aim is to be a Rs1,000-crore company by 2015. Our efforts on all fronts are geared towards achieving this goal.n payal.pruthi@9dot9.in

SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:54:46 PM

best of biz Leadership

Winning Mindsets Team and leadership insights from the 2010 Soccer World Cup DAVID LIM

A

s a leadership coach, I often get asked for my opinion about topical events. One such event that has captivated the world, is of course, the World Cup football tournament held recently in Africa. A fascinating aspect of this game is that often size does not matter, and a beautiful turn by a single individual can create history.

Think of Germany’s Gerd Muller who was often on the peripheries of a game, only to slip in, like a phantom to

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poach goals, and helped Germany win the 1974 championships.

Or perhaps an aging Roger Milla of Cameroon, who would be brought in only as a substitute player. And yet, he would score consistently each time, and helped outsiders Cameroon to the quarter-finals of the 1990 World Cup. Beneath all the action, drama, controversies lie some interesting fundamentals of leadership and teamwork and self-belief. Perhaps the three

DAVID LIM

The most interesting aspects of the game are self-belief, leadership, and team cohesion.

most interesting aspects of these arise from self-belief, leadership on and off the pitch, and team cohesion.

In many teams, the level of which self-belief is exerted helps determine a specific level of performance and confidence. However, self-belief can be overdone, and here are some examples of how these may have impacted the teams at the World Cup. Belief and self-belief helped such minnows such as New Zealand and Serbia who came to the Cup with little expectations. Though bundled out early in the Cup, the “All Whites” played games as a complete team – with no ‘stars’ or prima donna baggage, as did Serbia, the latter scalping giants and 3-time World Cup winners Germany 1-0 on their journey.

A strong sense of working together against a common adversary, coupled with a sense of “we’re-in-thistogether” always helps teams that lack ‘star’ individuals.

An overdone sense of self-belief can work in unproductive ways. Consider England, that has often taken a selfaggrandized view of their own prowess. When beliefs about one’s prowess is exaggerated by a partisan media, fat

SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:33:44 PM

best of biz Leadership paychecks paid by clubs, the fall can be spectacular. Witness Algeria, USA, Slovenia and England’s group stage matches.

England was supposed to shine in a group comprising of much weaker teams, and yet barely scraped through to the knock-out stage. And yet some people were tipping the vastly experienced English to edge out a youthful German side. But on that fateful day, England looked pedestrian against a young, lightning fast German side that eventually tore England apart at the backend of their half through counterattacks, thrashing them 4-1, the biggest defeat in a World Cup ever by England.

Germany went on to wallop fancied Argentina 4-0, a spectacular result considering the pedigree of the latter.

Though beaten later by a more tactically superior Spain, Germany beat Uruguay 3-2 for the 3rd place – and when asked about their outcome, the

question of self-belief quickly arose.

Germany simply had solid grounds to believe they were really good as a team.

This raises a common issue affecting many professionals of any industry. Self-esteem and self-belief are best linked to learning a skill, applying the said skill and then doing better over the course of multiple cycles of exercising the skills.

Let’s look at leadership for a moment.

One of several reasons for the leadership success of a club-level coach like Jose Mourinho was his ‘people management’ skill. When coaching UK club Chelsea to top honours in Europe, he would, at the beginning of each match, line up his players, and hug each one of them. Mercurial football star and 2010 Argentine coach Diego Maradona would also do exactly that, with a self-avowed stance of creating a ‘harmonious’ team.

He would pick players purely by gut instinct, and shocked the establish-

A strong sense of working together against a common adversary, coupled with a sense of “we’re-inthis-together” always helps teams that lack ‘star’ individuals.

ment when he was picked to coach the national team. He had no serious academic or coaching qualifications. And yet Argentina dazzled in South Africa. A happy, harmonious team, obviously has advantages in releasing the innate talents of each member. However, the happy journey ended at the quarter-finals where the Argentines lost because of the leadership ineptitude of their leader/coach.

Argentina brought one ‘game’ to the event, and when Germany shut down that game, they were finished.

The leadership journey is never an easy one. I recall my own challenges in my Everest expedition teams when you have to adapt to not only fast changing circumstances, but also to the demands of your team members. n David Lim is a leadership and negotiation coach.

Courtesy: CFO India

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SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:34:00 PM

cover story Channel Schemes

CHANNEL SCHEMES

FOR THAT

LITTLE

EXTRA As vendors turbo-charge the channel this festive season, partners feel that schemes should be more innovative and inclusive

PAYAL PRUTHI

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SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:27:03 PM

cover story Channel Schemes

W

ith the onset of the festive season and the consumer buying patterns steadily returning to normalcy, both vendors and partners look forward to shoring up their sales through one of the most trusted and tried modes - the partner schemes. Schemes usually help maintain business momentum in the market through overall excitement. More than the direct impact to sales, it is an overall motivation factor that helps in keeping the brand awareness at top of the mind. Even though consumers are becoming more conscious towards spending, such schemes seem to have a positive impact on sales. While the sole objective behind such schemes/ promotions is to help channel partners boost their sales by promoting the end product, the need for innovation and customisation is being increasingly conveyed to the vendors. More and more partners now want a 360 degree support from the vendors in not just availing the scheme but making the most out of them. In return, the vendors are getting more motivated with the overall structuring of these schemes.

Taking a fresh approach “Every company should have a thoughtful plan while conceiving partner schemes and there definitely cannot be a ‘one size fits all’ approach for this,” says Alex Li, Vice President-HSB (Home & SMB), Lenovo India. According to him, the current industry trends suggest that vendors are slowly moving away from the erstwhile stock keeping based incentives format to a logically progressive sellout based incentives format.

“Foreign trips continue to be in vogue. An interesting trend we are currently witnessing is that partners now prefer schemes which enable them to travel abroad along with their families,” adds Alex.

According to Yashpal, Proprietor, Devraj Computers Chennai and a Dell distributor, the vendors have also been quick to realise that partner schemes need to constantly evolve. “All vendors are constantly innovating with the schemes due to the increasing competition while keeping the market conditions in mind.

From the usual Bangkok trips, they are now looking at exotic destinations like Egypt and Switzerland to break the monotony,” he says.

“Since partners want promotional schemes which are more saleable, we try to put new products as incentives/rewards. In our attempt to make channel see new technologies/products which are exciting and expensive, we try and make the channel experience the same through the partners scheme platform,” says Sanjay Yadav, Country Head, Retail, Dell India.

Recently, D-Link also introduced a scheme for partners christened ‘Reward Yourself ’, which allowed channel partners to decide on the reward of their choice based on their preference. According to Rajesh Sahore, Sales Head India & SAARC at D-Link, “The scheme has been designed keeping in mind solely what partners want and give them the freedom to decide the best reward that works for them. The real bonus for resellers in such innovative schemes is that they can now mix and match slabs depending on their preference and convenience,” says Sahore.

Rakesh Jain of Supreme Computers, who has been constantly availing partner schemes, says, “Schemes

An interesting trend we are currently witnessing is that partners now prefer schemes which enable them to travel abroad along with their families.”

ALEX LI, VICE PRESIDENT-HSB (HOME & SMB), LENOVO INDIA

We have schemes where we also ensure that the sales people also get rewarded and get motivated to sell our products.”

ANKESH KUMAR, MARCOM HEAD, EMERSON NETWORK POWER

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cover story Channel Schemes

Such schemes help partners promote our products, ultimately resulting in higher margins/profits on increased volume for the partner himself, especially around the festive season.”

PRAVEEN SAHAI, DIRECTOR OF SALES - INDIA & SAARC, IOMEGA.

The emphasis is on avoiding price cutting and maintaining a standard market price and awarding partner on a consistent basis.”

SM RAMPRASAD, SR BUSINESS MANAGER CPG, EPSON INDIA.

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offered by vendors offer various value propositions in terms of bundled gifts, travel trips and freebies, which include items like cars and gold.

The appraoch now taken by the vendors is that of a win-win situation for both themselves and their partners instead of just pushing stocks.”

Meanwhile, vendors like Acer and Emerson also offer various business enablers as part of partner schemes. “If a particular partner achieves a certain set target, we support him with free local ads in the media for a fixed time period, the cost of which is entirely borne by us. In case of small retail outlets, especially during the festive season, we have schemes where we fund the appointment of a retail person at the counter for three months or so,” says S Rajendran,Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India.

Emerson Network Power also has certain schemes to help its partners retain manpower and to reward the sales person of the partners focussing on the brand. “We have schemes where we also ensure that the sales people also get rewarded and get motivated to sell our products. These people can monitor the points earned by them on the portal and can avail the rewards on quarterly or annual basis,” says Ankesh Kumar, Sr. Manager Micro And Small UPS and MarCom Head, Emerson Network Power. Emerson is also in talk with certain banks to issue gift cards which can be used as debit cards for purposes like shopping and dining by the partners as part of the schemes.

At Epson too, the idea is to increase the ROI, reach and visibility of the partner through schemes. “As a company, we do not believe in the idea of making a partner buy in bulk to avail the scheme benefits. The emphasis is on avoiding price cutting and maintaining a standard market price and awarding partner on a consistent basis,” says SM Ramprasad, Sr Business Manager - CPG (Consumer Product Group), Epson India.

According to Sunil Gugale of United Peripherals, Pune, who is also a Canon distributor, schemes act as catalysts and are great market boosters. “There is nothing called a perfect partner scheme. However, off late, vendors are assisting the channel to also identify new and growing segments through the schemes, and then work on demand generation. This way, a partner is able to increase his profitability in addition to the scheme benefits.”

Canon too rolled out an innovative scheme where instead of rewarding its partners with gifts, cash or foreign trips, the vendor announced the `Elite Circle’. Through this scheme, the vendor aims to reward its best partners by helping them build business capabilities through special trainings.

Targetting upcountry markets with customised schemes

However, many partners feel the schemes are best availed by and benefit only the volume partners in big cities. According to Amit Saraf, Wian Solutions, Bangalore, it is only the big partners who remain entitled to benefit from these schemes. “For someone like me who does an annual business of close to 20 lakh, is not the partner a vendor is looking at with these schemes. Often the target slabs will be too high for small partners to qualify,” says Saraf.

More and more partners are finding the need for schemes which are region and tier specific.

“Certain schemes which are announced by the vendors in the metros may not yield the same results in the B and C class cities. The buying patterns and consumer behaviour in small cities differs when compared to metros.

Also, many resellers cannot achieve volume sales and not even small targets during the scheme period. A vendor must find out which schemes would attract the channel in small cities and at what level,” says Sanjay Sharma of Microcom Computers, Chandigarh.

A c c o r d i n g t o A n k i t A ga r wa l , O m Computronix, Lucknow, many times, the schemes are not communicated properly in small towns. “One of the common issues with partners in upcountry markets is scheme disbursement and settlement. Often, vendors are indifferent and have no processes in place to drive, execute and settle schemes in small towns. Also, distributors do not explain all the clauses related to a particular scheme sometimes,” says Agarwal.

However, the vendors have been quick to realise the growing importance of B & C class cities and have been aligning the schemes to suit small partners as well. “Vendors as well as partners are now increasingly focusing on expanding the customer base, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, and are paying more attention than ever before towards faster liquidation of stock. We have instituted slab wise schemes proportional to the number of units to be sold and clearly demarcate the ‘distributor’ focused schemes from the ‘reseller’ focused schemes to achieve more partner effectiveness,” says Alex. He adds that partners expect and appreciate a fair and transparent reward system and it is imperative that vendors take cognizance of this. Otherwise, however exciting a scheme is, it might not yield optimum results.

“We work closely with our channel partners and mutually agree upon a set of realistic yet ambitious targets for them, monitoring (and if need be revisiting) their targets on a regular basis. We seek partner feedback and inputs on all schemes that we conceive, and encourage an open communication framework with our partners; this has helped us fine tune certain schemes as well,” says Alex.

According to Mohit Anand,Country Manager, India, Belkin Asia Pacific, all their

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cover story Channel Schemes

Of late, vendors are assisting the channel to also identify new and growing segments through the schemes, and then work on demand generation. This way, a partner is able to increase his profitability in addition to the scheme benefits.”

SUNIL GUGALE OF UNITED PERIPHERALS

schemes are targeted towards the tier 3 partners. “We do not announce any schemes for the volume partners. It’s a conscious decision and Belkin is a strong votary of ensuring that the tier 3 partners do not face erosion of margins or become victims of discounting.

All they need is the invoice from the volume partner and they can claim the benefits from various schemes. The idea is also to help partners from small town to become aspirational,” says Anand.

Regular review meetings to take into consideration the requirements of the channel are organised by Emerson. “We have different slabs under the schemes depending on the size and territory where the partner operates.

All the terms and conditions are shared with the partner to rule out any confusion. Also, the partner portal provides all the information to the partners. We have clear categories of partners depending on which we provide an extra push for interest generation in smaller cities,” says Kumar.

Yashpal too feels that every vendor is now committed to reward the partners in smaller towns and cities as well. “The targets are more realistic for small resellers to achieve and schemes are equally attractive. Over a period of time, I have seen many small partners doing great business with these schemes and in turn have scaled up,” he says.

According to Rajendran, Acer has been rolling out schemes which are region specific and suitably aligned for that market. “We very clearly assist our partners to understand how to monitize and maximize the scheme and send regular reminders. In some cases, the sales people even go and explain the scheme to the partners,” says Rajendran.

Festive Fervour

Since partners want promotional schemes which are more saleable, we try to put new products as incentives.”

SANJAY YADAV, COUNTRY HEAD, RETAIL, DELL INDIA

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Not many beg to differ on how partner schemes is a definite propeller for partners to sell more during the festive season . “End consumers are inclined to spend more during festivals, with the festive cheer fuelling their purchase decision. In fact, this is the best time of the year for partners to convert leads easily and in more numbers. Festive schemes typically tend to be skewed towards inciting consumer purchase and naturally aid more sell out by partners,” says Alex.

The vendor announces innovative schemes during the festive season to motivate partners to sell more. One such recent initiative was on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan, wherein Levis gift vouchers were up for grabs, on purchase of a Lenovo product.

“Festive season is an important buying period. It is critical that partners have enough stocks available to service consumer demand, and to ensure the same, a good payout scheme typically is launched for the partner to ensure good stocks during the season,” says Yadav.

CHECK LIST Participate and spend more time understanding the end consumer requirements Focus more on adding value to sales Avoid discounting of schemes Do not over stock, but have adequate and timely supplies Re-train the front end sales staff, especially the retailers around the festive season Carefully read the terms and conditions and the disbursement policy related to the scheme Go for vendors who also support partners to carry out end-user activities and events, along with a sales targetoriented scheme Don’t get swayed by attractive looking schemes and always make business fundamentals as the top priority while buying. Partners must look and re-look at their inventory levels and rotate cash effectively.

According to Yadav, partners must make the most of the hype created in the market during the festive season by creating the right pull in the market through various schemes which at times can also be offered to the end customers. “Festive promotional schemes help a great deal in spiking up the sales as well as increasing the partner´s bottomline,” he says.

For the upcoming festive season, Iomega is planning to launch special offers like Gold schemes and White Gold schemes, which will provide the required impetus to capture the heightened purchase tendency of the Indian customer. “Iomega understands the importance of treating various categories of partners differently through a variety of partner schemes which can be both volume or value based. It is imperative that such schemes help partners promote our products, ultimately resulting in higher margins/profits on increased volume for the partner himself, especially around the festive season when the consumer sentiments are high,” says Praveen Sahai, Director of Sales - India & SAARC, Iomega.

Even as vendors continue to innovate in terms of partner schemes, partners too realise that schemes have become more relevant in these difficult times wherein competition is stiff and margins thin. With the festival season already setting in, most vendors are already in the process of announcing attractive schemes to win that extra mind share of their partners, for whom anything more than the usual is always welcome. n payal.pruthi@9dot9.in

SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:27:42 PM

techno touch Collaboration

THE

POWER OF

COLLECTIVES Enterprises are warming up to the benefits of new communication tools that engage audiences non-hierarchically

O

n a cavalier Saturday evening, a month ago, Yogesh Bansal, the Founder and CEO of Apnacircle. com, was set to retire early to his bed, till he received a call from his business associate, informing him about the integration of the web platform of ApnaCircle, a community for professionals, with a worldrenowned social networking site.

Well, this was the news for which he and his team had waited for long. “Wow! This is something that merits to be shared instantly with my team who worked hard to make this happen,” murmured a charged up Bansal. He unfolded his laptop to log in to his customised enterprise blog.

“Great news guys, your efforts and hard work have paid off. We have managed to partner with a world-renowned company, on which we have been working for so long.

Congratulations!” he wrote.

JATINDER SINGH

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techno touch Collaboration To his amazement, in less than an hour, a series of congratulatory messages, discussing ways to promote this achievement among the web platform users, started pouring in.

Bansal was not sure if he could receive a similar reception from his partners or employees, on a casual weekend, had the same message been communicated through an e-mail, or any other channel.

“Connecting via new-age tools is inarguably the best interactive approach, which makes a long-lasting impression in modern day communication,” Bansal notes, while recalling the moment.

No wonder then, even before the week started, a plan was in place to promote a new idea, developed in a fun-driven, participative environment, without giving any serious trouble to the team. And, that’s how the modern day communication should function— if one needs to outsmart competitors and gain first-mover advantage.

YOGESH BANSAL, FOUNDER & CEO, APNACIRCLE.COM

Connecting via new age tools is arguably the best interactive approach, which also makes a long-lasting impression in modern day communication.”

Changing perceptions When compared to 1.0 communication channels, industry experts today are convinced that applying real-time collaboration tools is the only way to increasing productivity—instantly.

And, it is a major method to encourage positive participation from employees, stakeholders and partners.

“Use of collaborative tools can help organisations circulate the information of ongoing process and projects, that too, with complete transparency.

It fosters the evolution of concepts and inferences, as a wide spectrum of people are involved,” says Jacob Livingstone, Manager-IT, BEC. One can evaluate its utility by way of ideation events and solutions received for a specific problem, or work products being delivered using such tools.

What’s more, groups can be built for opportunities, that work in parallel, which may result in shortening of delivery timelines. This becomes increasingly important for any organisation, that is geographically spread out.

Commenting on the importance of customised collaboration tools over social media platforms, Swapnil Paranjpe, Senior Project Manager– Enterprise Collaboration BU, Persistent Systems, says, “Enterprise collaboration tools are centred around attaining collective intelligence and staff collaboration at the organisation level, or with partners. These include features

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MANISH MEHTA, VP, GLOBAL ONLINE AT DELL

We have implemented ideas, sold products and services, changed business processes and much more through collaboration.”

JACOB LIVINGSTONE, MANAGER (IT), BEC

The use of collaboration tools can help organisations to circulate the information of ongoing process and projects with complete transparency.”

such as staf f networking, expert recommendations, information sharing, expertise location, peer feedback, and real-time collaboration. At the personal level, this enables employees to enhance social awareness and their profiles and interactions.”

For Tulip Telecom, the important lesson, while adopting the new media for partners and employees, was that social media marketing is not just about creating an account and sitting on it.

You need something extra to make it effective, rather than just hoping for customers to come looking for you.

The company has an in-house social engagement platform for employees named Tulip Café where employees are free to share, create groups, get into active discussions and share presentations. “On a daily basis, in fact sometimes at hourly intervals, there needs to be something relevant the platform should offer to its audience,” says Sujoy Mukherjee, AGM, Marketing– Tulip Telecom.

A couple of years ago, the company started an open-platform enterprise networking tool called Grey Gambit to develop a link with its customers—the IT leaders.

“Recently, we had 1,200 and more members with us. We managed to rope in encouraging participation in all sorts of activities,” says Gaurava Yadav, Project Manager for Grey Gambit.

Making the right connections Since microblogging is a modest expense (often as low as US$1 per user, per month), there is no need for elaborate RoI studies—prior to piloting the service.

However, experts believe, it’s critical to identify “key business goals” that an organisation wishes to achieve, before deploying a solution. A thorough brainstorming—as far as employee feedback is concerned—can be of great use to the organisation.

“Time has come to adopt smart practices that not only help businesses to reduce expenses, but also provide them practical ways of collaboration and communication,” says Karthik Padmanabhan, Country Manager– Lotus Software, IBM India (South Asia).

“We have implemented ideas, sold products and services and changed business processes through collaboration,” stresses Manish Mehta, VP, Global Online at Dell.

MAJOR ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATORS Salesforce Chatter: Chatter is a realtime cloud based collaboration tool for enterprises that enables employees to share the status of important projects and deals instantly Yammer: Founded in December 2007, Yammer is a Twitter like tool for improving workplace communication Microsoft Sharepoint: It’s a software platform developed by Microsoft for collaboration and web publishing combined under a single server. It has capabilities for developing web sites, portals, intranets, CMS and BI tools IBM’s Lotus: Lotus is a collaboration solution from IBM that provides rich chat (IM, audio, video), online meetings, and group collaboration.

Cisco’s Enterprise Collaboration Platform (ECP): It enables teams and knowledge workers to quickly and securely create, share, and scale content and expertise.

The company uses microblogging services, such as Yammer, to foster sharing among employees, as well as to share critical events within the organisation. “Yammer also integrates with the e-mail and can be used to share documents and links between employees,” Mehta adds.

Data theft & misuse; ignorance can be fatal The business world is still in the early stages of adopting social networking technologies. But, the future is alive with possibilities.

As different collaborative platforms continue to evolve, and new sets of public and private tools emerge, firms will need to establish corporate governance policies and “agile” IT architectures, which not only support dynamic communication, but also promote deeper and richer interactions that make businesses productive and thriving.

Since any collaborative tool has a human intervention side to it, the scourge of data theft and data misuse will always remain the main concern— and the main deterrent towards its use for several enterprises.

“Often, IT managers are left with the option of adopting a mechanism of close monitoring. And, reviewing the purpose for which the data was brought to use in the first place,”

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techno touch Collaboration explains Minhaz Zia, National Sales Manager, Unified Communications of Cisco India and SAARC. While this is a double-edged sword, putting in advanced measures of training, guidelines and control, is a prudent way to keeping negative impacts at bay.

Therefore, executive staffs, who take such initiatives, should be informed of the problems and be involved in the security, rather than be allowed to off-load responsibility to the security team. This will encourage a culture of security that is both collaborative and structured, and is also ingrained t h r o u g h o u t t h e o r ga n i s at i o n’s processes.

There is a combination of things an enterprise has to employ to address the security challenges.

“As IT managers will employ technical means to prevent, or detect, such occurrences, corporate policies should be formulated in a manner which act as a deterrent,” says Ashwani Tikoo, CIO, CSC in India.

THE FUTURE OF COLLABORATION • By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20% of business users • By 2012, over 50% of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging • Through 2012, over 70% of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail KARTHIK PADMANABHAN, COUNTRY MANAGERLOTUS SOFTWARE, IBM INDIA

The time has come to adopt smart communication practices that can help organisations to achieve results faster.”

• Within 5 years, 70% of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modelled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications Source: Gartner

Most enterprises are going in for background checks and track records of the prospective employees to unearth past records.

While marketing, PR, and sales are prominent when it comes to a global usage of collaboration tools, other core functional areas of the enterprise are increasingly experimenting with these tools, with positive results.

HR, CRM, supply-relationship management, product development and innovation or even service delivery are all parts of the value chain that can

derive advantages from social networking tools.

Confronting challenges Nevertheless, as organisations look at the future of social media, they must confront challenges such as lack of governance and IT involvement, which may impact the successful integration of these new platforms and technologies. n

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Courtesy: IT Next

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techno touch CRM

THE

NEXT

WAVE To prepare for a new CRM wave, it’s important to learn from the mistakes and pitfalls of its early years JILL DYCHE

W

hen I wrote the CRM handbook: A Business Guide to CRM, in 2002, companies were spending tens of millions of dollars on CRM software, but industry analysts were predicting that 80% of CRM projects would fail.

Mistakes and pitfalls of CRM’s early days are now legendary. Companies rushed to embrace CRM technologies, only to discover that automation couldn’t fix broken business processes, absent strategies or bad data.

Consultants keen on helping beleaguered companies get back on track proselytised the importance of change management to CRM initiatives, but that didn’t stick. As executives continued to aim their silver-bullet technologies toward the customer experience, they remained mired in incumbent business processes and traditional success metrics.

Everyone wanted to participate in vendor evaluation, but no one wanted

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to own the streamlining of order-tocash processes or new measurements for customer satisfaction. Despite millions of dollars spent on CRM technologies, it really was business as usual.

Most executives now admit that they were ill-equipped to launch their CRM efforts. Hopes for automating customerfacing business processes and achieving the celebrated “single view of the customer” were dashed, as sales, marketing and customer service executives came to terms with the fact that CRM was more than just a technology solution.

New best practices Today, however, new corporate strategies are resuscitating the need for deliberate and sustained customer management. Is your company ready for the next wave of CRM? Smart executives are heeding the lessons of firms that have gone before them. They’re aligning CRM efforts to corporate strategies and forgoing tech-

nology investments until their road maps are in place. They’re forging partnerships with consulting firms that have structured delivery approaches.

They’re being deliberate about incremental deployment, and are keeping the customer top-of-mind every step of the way.

Grange Insurance, based in Columbus, Ohio, is one of these forward-thinking companies. “We were lucky that we had an executive team willing to invest in the customer experience,” says Mike Buzek, the Vice President of EODB (Ease Of Doing Business), “but we knew we couldn’t sit around building vision statements and conducting focus groups. We had to craft solid requirements, identify the key stakeholders and define how we were going to execute. And we could never lose sight of what is best for our agents and policyholders.”

Buzek and his team are a reflection of the new best practices in customer management. Here are five habits followed

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techno touch CRM by savvy business owners of customerfocused programmes: Don’t call it “CRM.” The term is fraught with baggage. Customer initiatives are now business-owned and branded. Wander the halls of any large company’s sales or marketing organisation and you’ll hear “Customer Experience Management” (CEM) or “voice of the customer” mentioned long before hearing the CRM acronym.

Remember your business model.

CRM, at a telephone company that wants to understand the calling behaviors within micro-segments to bundle products and services, will look very different from CRM at a health care provider that wants to migrate to an end-consumer model, which will look different again from CRM at a retailer with a loyalty card. Understand the boundaries of CRM for both your company and your industry. When in doubt, map out desired outcomes.

Keep social media in perspective.

Many customer-management experts are betting on so-called “social CRM” to resuscitate moribund CRM efforts.

But where the customer experience is concerned, your company’s Facebook fan page and Twitter account are merely two additional communications channels. Your brand and your dialog with customers transcend social media.

Recently, a manager at a bank confided, “We’re putting all this effort into social media to get closer to our customers.

But we still can’t see the total set of products and services a customer has on a single screen, never mind whether [he or she is] profitable or not.” Social media goals should be a part of a rich set of customer-focused capabilities.

Consider the cloud. That “customer’s next likely purchase” pop-up doesn’t just magically appear on the callcenter rep’s screen. It’s the product of some rigorous integration and heavy-duty back-office analysis. When it comes to CRM functionality, even small and medium-size companies often have sophisticated processing and storage needs. Don’t let your existing technology infrastructure—or lack thereof—be an excuse not to launch new CRM efforts. There are plenty of CRM solutions in the cloud that support pay-as-you-go models, while forgoing significant infrastructure and setup costs.

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Don’t forget about the data. That “single version of the truth” promised by so many CRM vendors has ceded to the reality that many of yesterday’s CRM tools have become today’s legacy systems. New customer-focused strategies mandate that the huge volumes of data being generated are accurate, meaningful and reconciled across disparate silos.

Indeed, a single version of truth about a customer is as much a product of formal data governance processes as it is about a centralised technology platform.

The litmus test is the answer to this question: What’s your system of record for customer data? If the answer is, “We have more than one system of record for customer data,” then there is actually no system of record for customer data.

There’s a good chance that data quality is being compromised and that there are, in fact, multiple versions of the truth.

As our knowledge of how to deploy CRM the right way has evolved, so has the sophistication level of customers, who are demanding increasing control of their relationships and have higher expectations. To opt in to receive marketing campaigns means a clear quid pro quo from company to consumer.

Businesses need to expand their customer conver sations beyond knowing a customer’s purchase history and offering a product based on next-sequential purchase analysis.

Engaging a customer in a relevant dialog at the right time means optimising the mix of business processes, operational functionality, and information access to give traction to the brand and encourage customers to re-engage with you.

What you should do now Is your company reviving its CRM programme? Or have you been given responsibility for a highly visible “know thy customer” effort?

Either way, there are key steps you should consider to launch your customer initiative the right way.

First, whenever possible, align your CRM effort to corporate strategy.

Most enterprise CRM efforts will ultimately transcend individual lines of business and drive additional competitive advantage and efficiencies. By linking a new CRM programme to a key strategy that’s acknowledged by

Purchase analysis ‘cloud’ has made more noise and impact than any other new kid that ever arrived.

New corporate strategies are resuscitating the need for sustained customer management.

Businesses need to expand their customer conversations beyond knowing a customer’s purchase history and offering a product based on nextsequential purchase analysis.

upper management, you will cement top-level support.

Fe w exe c u t ive s w i l l s c o r n a customer-focused project that’s been strategically aligned. And engaging executives is a surefire way to secure adequate funding for your effort.

Know your road map. Is your company entrenched in TV and outdoor advertising at the expense of targeted online conversations with customers and prospects? Should you start CRM with your business customers—the 20% who produce 80% of your revenues—and forego consumers for a year or two? Where you begin will determine where you end up. The key is to do so in circumscribed increments.

Be willing to change measurements.

Compensate your employees for adopting fresh, customer-centric behaviors. The most reliable way to ensure everyone is on board is to change measurements and accompanying compensation structures.

My firm helped an automobile company build a CRM strategy in its call center. For its standard brand, the automaker compensated callcenter reps based on the number of calls they could take per hour and per day. But for its luxury brand, the automaker paid reps based on the results of post facto customer satisfaction surveys. All customers received good service, but the most profitable customer tier got the best service, and those serving them had an incentive to optimise it.

Lastly, don’t forget to manage expectations. The hardest part for Grange was defining the road map, Buzek confirms. “We invested in a clear and incremental delivery plan that is focused on continuous improvement, and then we socialised the plan with stakeholders,” he recalls.

“That way, everyone understands the value of improving the customer experience. Our CEM programme will help us realise the incremental impact of a superior insurance experience so we can continue to deliver those “wow” moments. That’s good for us, our agents and our policyholders.” n Jill Dyché, partner and co-founder of Baseline Consulting, performs advisory services in customer and data strategy delivery. © eWeek

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business intelligence Data Quality

QUALITY MATTERS

Organisations can get more out of their business intelligence investment with data quality management SUGANTHI SHIVKUMAR

M

any organisations consider data quality to be one of the top issues impacting analysis and decision-support. On one hand, the proliferation of Business Intelligence (BI), with data drawn from disparate systems and applications, could lead to worsening data quality and loss of confidence in BI reporting. On the other hand, BI deployed with quality data could help an organisation compete more effectively and decisively. In other words, data quality can put your organisation on defense or offense depending on how well you can manage it. This is why it is essential for an organisation to know how data quality impacts the most prevalent styles of BI, along with techniques to monitor and manage data quality end to end.

Towards pervasive BI Successful deployment of BI can help assess the health of an organisation, establish suitable key performance indicators, and monitor day-to-day operations with an eye toward driving top- and bottom-line growth.

Consequently, the demand for accurate data for performing BI tasks continues to grow from both the consumption and supply sides of information.

Intensifying demand for more data is propelling the widespread adoption of BI capabilities across the user base.

This extensive adoption has caused the facilities for BI to advance beyond traditional query, analytical reporting, and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) functions to now include operational dashboards, customizable scorecards, and advanced visualisation techniques.

Unlike the traditional BI applications

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business intelligence Data Quality that focused on queries and analytics, many newer BI uses revolve around operational decisions and subsequent actions. Pervasive BI, the facility to deliver right-time information to frontline workers, customers, and business partners, provides an organisation with the necessary visibility, insight, and facts to make smarter decisions in all processes at all times. How often do we feel that the data appears odd, or untrustworthy when we look at BI reports? This leads to delays and even halts in taking the necessary actions that are critical to the business.

The evolution towards Pervasive BI does not happen overnight. As the adage goes, trust must be earned, and trust in data is no exception. If data is incomplete, inaccurate, or full of duplicates, the whole system of trust is weakened and people become reluctant to use their BI tools. But beyond the obvious data cleansing and matching is the trust network that needs to be built around data warehouses, operational stores, and other systems and applications generating continuous streams of data throughout an enterprise. This is why an increasing number of organisations are undertaking data quality initiatives as a core tenet of their enterprise BI initiatives.

Importance of quality data The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) defines data quality as the quality of data’s content and structure (according to varying criteria), plus the standard technology and business practices that improve data, like name-and-address cleansing, matching, house-holding, de-duplication, standardization, and appending third-party data.

An organisation can measure data quality as a means to assign the value of data assets against business expectations defined by specific rules and criteria.

To judge quality of data, organisations typically start with frameworks and modify it based on maturity and priorities at any point in time. It is also important for both business and IT teams to agree on the metrics to measure.

As BI deployment becomes increasingly cross-divisional, managing data quality for types of master data beyond merely customer data has emerged as a best practice. Master data is a set of data elements along with their associated attributes, such as customer, product, employee, and vendor. Part and parcel of this is the performance

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and scalability required of the data quality management techniques due to the increasing data volume after aggregating and consolidating enterprise data for all types of BI. For this reason, the ability to profile, cleanse and deliver all types of data with high levels of quality all of the time, regardless of data volume and complexity, is foundational to the success of BI. And the payoff is immense. With good data quality, business insights gained through BI become actionable faster, often a lot faster. With increased confidence in data, executives, managers, and business users can readily recognize and act on new patterns and trends as well as on business warning signs with higher granularity and precision.

End-to-end data quality management also increases auditability and visibility of BI reporting, something that is especially valuable for compliance and risk management purposes.

Data quality and styles of BI As discussed, BI has evolved into a variety of styles to address the growing requirements of an organisation and the increased level of mission-critical activities. Each of these styles has its own set of data quality requirements:Scorecards and dashboards: These are becoming widely adopted as users increasingly look to gain the bird’seye view for financial, operational, and performance monitoring. With visual graphs, charts, and gauges, these delivery mechanisms help track performance metrics and notify staff about trends and decisions that may be required. The data elements required to provide the integrated views typically cut across multiple divisions and disciplines, and need to be absolutely up to date to be effective.

Enterprise reporting: Enterprise reporting provides individuals at all levels with a wide array of operational and other business reporting from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management ( C R M ) , Pa r t n e r Re l a t i o n s h i p Management (PRM), invoice and billing systems, and other source s y s t e m s a c r o s s a n e n t e r p r i s e.

Distribution of the reports is broad, and compensation and other incentive programmes are typically tied to the results that are reported.

OLAP analysis: OLAP allows a user to “slice and dice” interrelated subsets of data interactively on the fly. For

SUGANTHI SHIVKUMAR

It is essential for an organisation to know how data quality impacts the most prevalent styles of BI, along with techniques to monitor and manage data quality end to end.

Successful deployment of BI can help assess the health of an organisation, establish suitable key performance indicators, and monitor day-to-day operations with an eye toward driving topand bottomline growth.

example, users can analyze sales by region for specific time periods, performance by product, performance by salesperson, and so on. OLAP features such as drill up, down, or anywhere (across business dimensions), pivot, sort, filter, and page-by can be used to provide underlying details on performance. Critically important is the ability to answer whatever business question exists. This can mean investigating down to the most atomic level of detail available within a single or multiple data warehouses.

A dv a n c e d / p re d i c t i v e a n a l y s i s : Advanced and predictive analysis empowers sophisticated users to fully investigate and discover the details behind specific business performance and use that information to predict future outcomes. The approach may involve advanced statistical analysis and data mining capabilities.

Data quality management techniques Data quality improvement can have multiplying benefits to BI, as most organisations deploy a combination of these varying BI styles. This is why a successful BI programme must include a data quality management component in a metric-driven, programmatic fashion. Maintaining data integrity across extended teams throughout the data life cycle is required to meet regulatory compliance and governance objectives.

And to ensure confidence in the validity of enterprise data, information as well as data flows and relationships must be auditable and traceable.

Notifications and alerts Using email, browsers, networked servers and printers, PDAs, or portals, notifications and alerts are used to proactively share information across a wide range of user touch points. With timely delivery of target information, key stakeholders and decision makers can identify potential areas of opportunity and detect problematic areas on which to take action. This “frontline” BI delivery mechanism keeps the organisation aligned and abreast of business risks and opportunities while events are still fresh and meaningful to warrant responses.

Implementing a data quality programme Improving data quality must be approached as an ongoing cycle. To start, data profiling is a key element,

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business intelligence Data Quality DATA QUALITY DIMENSION FRAMEWORK Completeness

What data is missing or unusable?

Conformity

What data is stored in a nonstandard format?

Consistency

What data values give conflicting information?

Accuracy

What data is incorrect or out of date?

Duplicates

What data records or attributes are repeated?

Integrity

What data is missing or not referenced?

as it enables you to determine the content, structure, and quality of highly complex data structures and to discover hidden inconsistencies and incompatibilities between data sources and target applications.

Establishing metrics and defining targets helps IT and the business measure the results of data quality efforts as part of a BI initiative. Design and implementation of data quality rules help define and measure targets and criteria for data quality. Integrating data quality rules and activities (profiling, cleansing/matching, automated remediation, and management) with data integration processes is critical to enhancing the accuracy and value of data assets.

Reviewing exceptions and refining rules is best accomplished as a joint effort involving core team members and BI stakeholders. And, finally, proactive data quality monitoring through dashboards and real-time notifications is also fast becoming a standard best practice.

BI stakeholders themselves, if involved in the data quality process as they ought to be, can be given the tools to do this, as they know best what the quality level of their data needs to be.

Pervasive BI provides an organisation with the necessary visibility, insight, and facts to make smarter decisions in all processes at all times.

management, and delivery of enterprise data in a secure, consistent, and timely manner. With this approach, IT is able to reuse data access, data transformation, and data quality logic across multiple BI and other environments, thus reducing the time to implement new BI projects or deliver enhanced functionality across the enterprise.

Further, an enterprise data integration infrastructure is able to support users who require data at varying levels of latency — batch, real time, and near real time. As business processes evolve and businesses move from traditional decision-support systems to more operational decision making that requires operational BI, the ability to support these varying latencies and continuous availability is growing in its importance.

Conclusion

of many organisations.

By adopting an enterprise data quality approach, BI solution strategists and architects can design and implement the five prominent styles of BI, including score-carding, detailed analysis, and on-demand alerts – with much improved confidence.

Data quality solutions can also synergize with existing enterprise data integration processes and solutions that have the ability to access and manage all types of master data in a metric driven approach. The results can be far superior compared to the use of traditional data quality technology.

Successful deployment of data quality at this truly enterprise level helps an organisation maximize the returns on its BI investments by improving its ability to leverage BI to drive competitive advantage and market leadership. n

Timely, accurate data used for BI applications is critical to the workings

Suganthi Shivkumar is MD for South Asia, Informatica

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With good data quality, business insights gained through BI become actionable faster, often a lot faster.

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Enterprise data quality for enterprise BI With a need to manage data quality end to end, new thinking around data quality architectures has emerged.

Many leading organisations are now implementing data quality as part of their enterprise data integration architecture. There are numerous advantages to this approach.

For one, an enterprise data integration foundation enables the discovery, access, transformation, semantic reconciliation,

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trends Rashi to distribute AMDHP to continue with telecom partners for distribution based PCs from Lenovo

S

unil Dutt, Vice President and General appointed telecom partners do now have Manager, Personal Systems Group, an expertise in selling IT products. It is to HP India, says the company is willbe noticed however that most of these teleing to talk to IT associations to resolve com partners have had past experience in the deadlock with them, but will be more IT distribution.” inclusive when it comes to appointing teleWhen questioned on whether HP will com partners. replace its telecom partners in Mumbai with After continued protests by different IT IT partners the way it did after the protest by associations across the counthe Kerela Association AKITDA, try against the new distribuDutt said, “It was merely a tion policy of IT major HP, the matter of not getting the right vendor is firm on not changing message across to our channel its stand on including telecom partners in Kerela about the new partners as its distribution channel policy. After a detailed partners. After Mumbai based conversation with them, we association TAIT announced were able to explain our posithe ban on billing of HP prodtion, which they appreciated. In ucts followed by the Chennai Mumbai, we will continue with Association SNEHAM taking the telecom partners.” a similar stand, HP’s Sunil Sunil Dutt, VP, PSG, HP India When asked how does HP Dutt is certain about following plans to resolve the issue with the current distribution policy which he TAIT in Mumbai, Dutt said, “I am in thinks is more inclusive. constant dialogue with TAIT. Partners are Talking to DCC, Dutt said, “The new doing business with us. I would be meeting distribution policy has been rolled out them soon and I am positive that the issue keeping in mind the growing and changwill be resolved.” ing market dynamics and to cross pollinate The vendor also is certain of tackling such the learnings of different industries for the issues just through meaningful dialogue. n benefit of partners and consumers. Many of our IT partners think that the newly Payal Pruthi

Casio launches calculators with Indian comma marker

C

asio India has released 4 new check calculators - DJ-120D, JJ-120D, MJ-120D & MJ-100D, which feature a Indian number display format of lakhs and crores. As per Casio, this is for the first time any company has developed and marketed such a calculator with Indian digit separator format.

These calculators feature Casio’s 150 steps check function, and features a display that can be switched to an Indian digit separator format. In the standard display format, numbers are separated in thousand, million & billion, i.e. comma comes after every three digits.

When the Indian format is selected, digits are separated in thousand, lakhs & crores, i.e. comma comes after first three digits, then after every two digits.

Casio’s check function enables users to review values entered during calculation steps, either during or after calculation.

These Casio calculators are available at stationary shops in the price range of Rs360 to Rs500. n

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enovo has announced the appointment of Rashi Peripherals as its national distributor for its entire range of AMD based consumer PC and Thinkpad series.

Ra s h i w i l l f o c u s o n d i s t r i b u t i n g L e n ovo ’ s premium range of products, Kapal Pansari from Rashi which include the complete range of consumer desktops and notebooks based on the AMD chipset. Rashi Peripherals will also be distributing the Lenovo ThinkPad T, X, W series across the country.

Commenting on the tie up, Kapal Pansari, Director – Marketing, Rashi Peripherals, said, “We are elated to be distributing Lenovo products. Rashi started the Notebook business around 6 years ago with ThinkPad; so distributing the ThinkPad brand is very close to our heart. Also, since we are distributors for AMD CPUs, distributing Lenovo AMD consumer notebooks and desktops will further strengthen our AMD portfolio.”

According to Alex Li- Vice President, HSB (Home & Small Business), Lenovo India, “Lenovo is pleased to join hands with Rashi Peripherals for a national distribution arrangement and looks forward to a mutually beneficial, profitable and productive partnership. We are confident that Rashi Peripherals will help us reach many more consumers.” n

Intel to acquire Infineon's wireless solutions biz for $1.4 billion

I

nfineon Technologies AG and Intel Corporation have entered into a definitive agreement to transfer Infineon’s Wireless Solutions (WLS) business to Intel in a cash transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion.

The board of directors of Intel and the supervisory board and the management board of Infineon have approved the transaction. It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011.

WLS will operate as a standalone business serving its existing customers. WLS will also contribute to Intel’s strategy to make connected computing ubiquitous from smartphones to laptops to embedded computing.

As per Intel, its goal is to expand its mobile and embedded product offerings to support additional customers and market segments, including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks and embedded computing devices.

Through this effort, Intel will pair WLS’ cellular technology with its core strengths to enable the delivery of low-power, Intel-based platforms.

“The acquisition of Infineon’s WLS business strengthens the second pillar of our computing strategy - internet connectivity - and enables us to offer a portfolio of products that covers the full range of wireless options from Wi-Fi and 3G to WiMAX and LTE,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. n

SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:52:06 PM

trends Anytime Anywhere

TAIT not to buy any HP products from tier 1 partners

T

AIT, India’s premier IT Association, has decided not to purchase any HP products from the T1 level with immediate effect. This was decided after the association held a members meet on August 31, 2010.

Members discussed the new distribution policy of HP’s PSG division. TAIT felt that after having a dialogue with the vendor for the past 2 months, things were not going to the logical culmination as desired by the members of the IT fraternity in Mumbai. TAIT had opined that the T1 and T2 tiers should be members from IT trade/IT distributors only.

After not finding a common ground through several dialogues, it was decided to desist from purchasing with immediate effect all HP products

Accounting

from the T1 level. T2 partners will continue to sell HP products till Sep 11th. After this deadline, no member will deal (buy or sell) in any HP products.

As per TAIT, it has taken this stand to ensure that IT business remains in the IT channel and the association will be very vocal towards any attempt by any brand which bypasses the IT channel.

When contacted by DCC, Parikshet Singh Tomar, Head, Consumer Channel Sales, HP, refused to comment on the development.

It may be noted that HP has been trying to rejig its distribution model after losing ground to competitors such as Dell. But, some of the moves by the company have ruffled feathers of its traditional channel partners. n

ADATA offers scheme for Technocrat partners

A

DATA Technology has provided additional gifts through a promotional scheme for Technocrat Infotech sale partners to promote the C906 pendrive, effective until September 26th.

Exclusively for Technocrat’s channel partners and resellers, this incentive programme offers valuable additional gifts to promote the C906 pendrive product. Under the programme, incentives are awarded upon sale partners’ purchasing quantities of C906 pendrive products.

On purchase of 25 numbers of the bundle (2 GB + 4 GB), partners will receive 1 number of 10gm silver coin. On purchase of 50 numbers of the bundle (2 GB + 4 GB), partners will receive 1 number of bag pack. On purchase of 100 numbers of the bundle (2 GB + 4 GB), partners will receive 1 number of Motorola mobile.

This scheme is valid until September 26th, 2010, for purchases billed from Technocrat Infotech. n

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Global semiconductor revenue to grow 31.5% in 2010: Gartner

W

orldwide semiconductor revenue in 2010 is forecast to reach $300 billion, a 31.5% increase from the 2009 revenue of $228 billion, according to the latest outlook by Gartner.

Analysts project worldwide semiconductor revenue to total $314 billion in 2011, a 4.6% increase from 2010.

The projected 2010 revenue for the semiconductor industry has increased from Gartner’s forecast in the second quarter of 2010, when it expected worldwide semiconductor sales to grow 27.1% in 2010.

However, analysts warned that while semiconductor revenue is still poised to hit record levels this year, second half growth is expected to be below seasonal norms as semiconductor sales align with electronic system sales.

The forecast of second half 2010 PC production unit growth has been reduced in the 3Q10 update.

Gartner analysts said consumer PC purchases in mature markets were slightly weaker than expected in the second quarter and the outlook for the third

quarter is below seasonal growth. However, surging sales of media tablets are partially offsetting the weakness in consumer PCs, as they have begun to prove themselves a popular substitute for netbooks.

The outlook for the mobile phone market has been steadily improving throughout 2010. The forecast of total market growth has been increased slightly from the 2Q10 update. Gartner analysts stated that application-specific semiconductors for the phone market are experiencing intense competitive pressure, with revenue growing only about 13% in 2010. Smartphones continue to drive the mobile phone semiconductor market, representing 18% of units and 36% of overall 2010 mobile phone semiconductor revenue. These percentages increase to 41% of units and 64% of mobile phone semiconductor revenue by 2014, as entry-level smartphones trigger a second wave of growth in the market.

The dramatic rise in DRAM revenue growth is set to peak in 2010. n

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SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:52:07 PM

trends Inspan unveils new PC cabinets from Mercury

I

nspan Infotech has announced the new arrivals of Xpress casings - PC cabinets from Mercury. As per the company, the newer models in this series are positioned to address the segment of customers that would be willing to spend a little more for extended features.

This series, with its full range, offers a range of 14 models with 22 color combinations, making it easy for the dealers to cater all the segments of customers. The new models that are getting introduced are Pegasus, Indus, Petra, Swan, Cherry and Crest.

“Inspan continuously plans to enable partners to cater

all customer segments when it comes to PC components.

This helps them retaining the existing customer base apart from getting new customers. Variety is the key in consumer products and this series offers that variety,” said Sudhir S, Managing Director of Inspan Infotech.

“Xpress Casings from Mercury provide good price advantage to partners to attract larger set of customers who aspire to buy premium brands and they would benefit from this,” added Sudhir.

Xpress Casings is priced at an MRP of Rs1,475 and is available ex-stock. n

SNEHAM not to buy from HP’s chosen distie

J

ust a day after TAIT called for HP boycott following the disagreement over the vendor’s distribution policy, Chennai based association of IT Dealers - SNEHAM - has also initiated action against HP. The dealers have decided not to buy any HP products from Best Source Infotech, an HP distributor.

According to R Kumar, Secretary SNEHAM, the association conducted its general body meeting on August 27, 2010, after the talks with HP over resolving the issue failed. “We have been voicing our concerns regularly to HP, but so far, the vendor has done nothing to settle them. They have appointed Best Source Infotech as distributor from outside Chennai who is being favoured by HP over others. Till date, HP has done nothing to solve the issues raised out of the implementation of the new business policy even after repeated reminders,” said Kumar.

The association has also decided to carry out a silent march with placards to highlight the grievances of the dealer community outside HP office on September 14.

“We are being supported by a few other IT Associations like ITTA and Confed-ITA. We have also spoken to TAIT president who has assured us of support in this cause. If HP continues to be indifferent towards our problems, our next step would be to ban HP products in entire Tamilnadu,” said Kumar. n Payal Pruthi

Dell launches partner storage summit initiative

D

ell India, in an effort to deepen its engagement with its partners, has launched a new initiative – Dell Consultive - A Partner Storage Summit, which is an initiative to build conversations between the partners focused on storage solutions and Dell’s storage specialist.

These summits will be organised on a regular basis with the aim of developing a loyal network of storage–led solution providing partners by delivering a differentiated value-add to these partners and facilitating expansion into the storage market.

This first council at Bangalore will bring together Dell and industry storage experts with 15 key partners of Dell, to discuss key storage trends, customer pain points, partner issues and strategies and the key Dell offerings from technology as well as partner business perspectives.

The summit also looks to create a platform for best practice sharing and discussing key pain points through partner case studies and interactive discussions.

“Storage offers some of the biggest opportunities for business growth in the IT market and we believe we could help our partners become more profitable through a sustained understanding of storage solutions-selling. As organisations understand the importance of data management and increase their investments in implementing storage solutions, we believe Dell’s comprehensive portfolio of offerings offers us as well as our partners a tremendous opportunity in the market, and initiatives such as the Partner Storage Summit are directed towards tapping that opportunity”, said Harmeet Malhotra, Enterprise Solutions Marketing Director- Asia Pacific & Japan, Storage & Unified Fabric Solutions Marketing at Dell. n

Transcend launches USB 3.0 ExpressCard Adapter

T

ranscend Information has launched a two-port USB 3.0 ExpressCard Adapter, which as per the company, is an easy-to-install add-in card that allows users to enhance their notebook with fast USB 3.0 technology.

According to Gordon Wu, Regional Head – South Asia, Transcend, “For laptop users desiring to join the USB 3.0 revolution without replacing their existing computer, Transcend’s USB 3.0 ExpressCard Adapter is a highly cost-effective solution for connecting to and taking advantage of USB 3.0-compatible peripherals. The card’s ExpressCard/34 interface is compatible with virtually all current notebook computers, and offers unrestricted two-way communication between notebook PCs and the latest generation of USB devices.”

The new USB 3.0 ExpressCard Adapter comes with two high-speed USB ports that fully support SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard with connection bandwidth of up to 5Gb/s. As per the company, the card enables data transfer rates up to ten times faster than USB 2.0 with optimized power efficiency.

Priced at Rs1,900, Transcend’s PNU3 USB 3.0 ExpressCard Adapter is fully compatible with Windows 7, and is backed by Transcend’s 2-year warranty. n

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9/10/2010 7:52:08 PM

trends Buffalo unveils new MiniStation Lite USB 3.0

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uffalo Technology has announced that they have unveiled a new design for the MiniStation Lite USB 3.0, which is a portable storage device.

“MiniStation Lite USB 3.0 is an innovative storage solution for consumers, as it comes with simple plug and play option and features like Eco Manager and Turbo PC for windows. The MiniStation Lite is idle for secure, high speed storage and backup,” said Susumu Kobayashi, Country Head, Buffalo Technology.

As per the company, the MiniStation Lite has Turbo PC installed for windows, thus providing 25% faster transfer rate. Designed with an energy

efficiency tool that conserves energy, it can reduce power usage and battery consumption, especially during extended periods of inactivity.

It features SuperSpeed USB 3.0, which offers maximum transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbps, 10 times faster than USB 2.0.

Backed with 3 years of replacement warranty, the Buffalo Eco-Minded MiniStation Lite USB 3.0 is available in two different capacities: 500 GB for Rs9,000 and 640 GB for Rs11,000. n

HP beats Dell offer, to buy 3PAR for $2.35 billion

I

n a joint statement, HP and 3PAR have announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement, under which HP will purchase 3PAR, a global provider of utility storage, through a cash tender offer of $33 per share in cash, or an enterprise value of $2.35 billion.

Combining 3PAR’s utility storage products with HP’s existing storage solutions will strengthen HP’s storage, server and networking portfolio. As per HP, 3PAR will accelerate its converged infrastructure strategy by driving growth in the fast-growing virtual data center and cloud computing markets.

“HP and 3PAR is a winning combination that will accelerate HP’s converged infrastructure strategy and bolster our ability to provide customers with the industry’s high-

est levels of performance, efficiency and reliability,” said Dave Donatelli, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. “We intend to invest in 3PAR’s technology to create long-term value for our stakeholders,” he added.

3PAR also announced that it has terminated its merger agreement with Dell Inc. and paid Dell the $72 million termination fee required to be paid as a condition to terminating the merger agreement.

HP’s cash tender offer commenced on August 27, 2010 and it is scheduled to expire at 12:00 midnight, New York City time on September 24, 2010.

The final closing of the acquisition is expected to occur by the end of the calendar year. n

I

ntex Technologies has announced 5%-8% increase in the prices of its IT hardware peripherals, TFT LCD monitors and computers. The prices for some of the products have already been increased and for the rest, it will become effective from September 1, 2010.

This price hike will partially absorb the cost increases on account of various factors such as global increase in major raw material costs including copper, aluminum, steel & plastics; doubling up of shipping freight and component costs on account of appreciation of Chinese Yuan and depreciation of Indian Rupee.

According to Vikram Kalia, General ManagerProducts (Peripherals & PC), Intex Technologies, “The price rise became inevitable due to the consistent rise in these important cost factors over past few months. In spite of these cost deterrents, we will continue to strive to live up to the expectations of our channel partners and consumers by offering them our ever expanding range of value for money products, supported by attractive deals and reliable after sales service.” n

Asus Sabertooth X58 motherboard launched

Panasonic launches 2 new LCD projectors

sus has launched its new motherboard – the Asus Sabertooth X58, which as per the company, delivers the latest Intel chipset and support for the fastest processors in the market, including the Intel Core i7-980X, as part of the TUF (The Ultimate Force) Series of heavy duty motherboards.

According to Vi n ay S h e t t y – C o u n t r y Manager, Component Business at ASUS (India), “The Sabertooth X58 is a military grade motherboard and its strengths lie in its extremely durable make, along with the inclusion of new data transfer standards USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s, ensuring no compromise in its features.”

The new motherboard has a meticulous thermal design, which means heat and stress are not obstacles. n

anasonic has introduced two new LCD projectors - PT-LB1EA and PT-LB2EA, which as per the company, are specially designed keeping the Indian market scenario in mind and engineered by Panasonic Japan.

The XGA resolution for `Shiro’ models come with the option of 2200 lumens or 2600Lumens brightness, a popular brightness requirement in Asia for various applications ranging from education, corporate, SOHO, gaming to food and beverage outlets.

Both models weigh only 2.3kg, and are equipped with Panasonic’s patented Daylight View Technology.

According to Manish Sharma, Director Marketing Panasonic India, “The projector will enliven any business presentation or any entertainment programme, without interruption even if there is a voltage fluctuation.” n

A

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Intex hikes its products’ prices

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SEPTEMBER 2010

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trends Global PC shipments to increase 19% in 2010: Gartner

W

orldwide PC shipments are projected to total 367.8 million units in 2010, a 19.2% increase from 308.3 million units shipped in 2009, according to the latest preliminary forecast

by Gartner.

“The PC market revived in the first half of 2010, but the real test of its resilience is yet to come,” said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director at Gartner. “We have reduced our forecast for second-half 2010 PC growth to 15.3%, approximately 2% below our previous forecast, in light of the uncertain economic outlook for the United States and Western Europe. There is no doubt that consumer, if not business PC demand, has slowed relative to expectations in mature markets.

Recent dramatic shifts in the PC supply chain were in no small part a reaction to fears of a sharp slowdown in mature-market demand. However, suppliers’ risk-aversion is as much a factor in these shifts as any actual downshift in demand,” he added.

“Consumers buoyed the PC market in 2009 as businesses delayed their purchases. The slow pace

of economic recovery and austerity measures in Europe have made PC suppliers very cautious in 2010. However, consumer demand is likely to remain strong even if the economic recovery stalls because consumers now view the PC as a relative ‘necessity’ rather than a ‘luxury’ and will continue to spend on PCs, even at the expense of other consumer electronic devices,” Atwal said.

Gartner analysts said businesses will find it very difficult to delay PC replacements further. The age of the professional PC installed base is already at an alltime high.

“Businesses that delay replacing much longer risk alienating employees, burdening themselves with more service requests and support costs, and ultimately facing higher migration costs when they eventually migrate to Windows 7,” Atwal said. “The bottom line is that businesses need to refresh their PCs sooner rather than later. Thus, the full bloom of the long-awaited professional PC refresh can’t be more than a few quarters ahead,” he added. n

TAIT to adopt uniform Octroi policy after Sept. 15

A

t a members meet held on August 31, 2010, TAIT decided to adopt a uniform Octroi policy after September 15, 2010.

The first matter discussed at the meet was of uniform pricing. TAIT members decided to deal with and promote only those products which are delivered Octroi paid in Mumbai and also carry the same policy in entire Maharashtra state.

They will approach all vendors and distributors for the implementation of the same.

TAIT has set a deadline of Sep. 15th, beyond which only uniform priced goods will be purchased by the channel community.

Though vendors and distributors are free to decide the price of the products, the price will be the same inside Octroi area and outside Octroi area, i.e, uniform price inside-outside Octroi area. n

Strontium announces SMS Star contest

S

trontium Technology has announced a SMS Star contest starting from August 23, 2010, to November 23, 2010, on purchase of USB flash drives for the end consumers across India.

In order to participate in the contest, the customers have to purchase Strontium USB flash drives. Inside this packaging, there is a serial number which one needs to SMS to 56677 in this format: <Strontium><Serial Number><Name><Mobile>. An acknowledgement message will be sent to confirm entry into the lucky draw. The draw dates are October 1, 2010 and December 1, 2010, and winners will be notified through SMS. The prizes include: Chevrolet Beat car, Hero Honda CBZ X-treme motorcycles, Apple 13-inch MacBooks, Apple iPhones, Sony Bravia LCD TVs, Nano 16GB Apple iPods, Shuffle 4GB Apple iPods, Micromax Q7 or equivalent phones, Ray Ban Aviator Explorer sunglasses, Maxima watches, and, laptop bags.

According to Ajay Kogta, Country Manager, India Sub-continent, Strontium Technology, “We expect brand awareness from this promotion and our channel partners will be able to capitalize on this brand value in the long run.” n

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SEPTEMBER 2010

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trends ZyXEL’s new ZyWALL launched Gigabyte rolls out

Z

yXEL Communications has l a u n c h e d t h e Z y WA L L U S G 50/20/20W series, which is the latest Unified Security Gateway series that aims to provide enterprise-class solutions to help satisfy the security needs of small businesses.

Powered with an integrated, highperformance security processor and a proven Gigabit fiber architecture, the new ZyWALL series features real-time inspection during operation of the content filter with granular control.

As per the company, it ensures that all content f l o w i n g through the n e t wo r k i s seamlessly inspected and that network t h r e at s a r e blocked without hampering

the throughput efficiency, simultaneously optimizing protection and performance, while filtering applications, such as file loading, e-mailing and information searches.

Meanwhile, the unique clean-traffic feature for inspection also protects the network against risks such as viruses and other internet threats to assure business operation efficiency and high network performance.

The ZyWALL USG 50/20/20W series also incorporate power saving features to reduce energy costs through smart power consumption management.

Powered by ZyXEL’s IntelliEnergy Green Technology, the ZyWALL USG 50/20/20W series can automatically detect network traffic, link status and temperature and then adjust the power consumption accordingly.

The company says that this “Green Technology” will benefit businesses in reducing their power consumption by up to 80%. n

India is spammer No.2: Report

A

new report prepared by TrendLabs has determined that India is at the No.2 position worldwide when it comes to spam-sending countries.

According to the report, the top 10 spam-sending countries comprised 85.67% of the total number of spam messages circulated.

India comprises of 12.55% of the messages circulated worldwide and is the No. 2 nation after USA in the top 10 list of researchers.

The United States, Brazil, and India retained their positions as the top 3 spam-sending countries, a trend consistent with the previous two months.

Both the United States and Brazil posted an increase in their spam numbers during the said months. India, meanwhile, posted a decline.

“User account information and credit card credentials reap good profits for cybercriminals. As such, cybercriminals continued to leverage on the widespread use of social networking sites, search engines, and redirectors this July. In the report, we detailed certain attacks and notable data points related to compromised sites,” commented Amit Nath, Country Manager India and SAARC Trend Micro.

The report also notes that the continued proliferation of online gaming threats has made the gaming sector a consistent cybercriminal target. This is particularly true in China where online gaming is very popular and where cybercriminals have created XWM, the popular Chinese Trojan kit. n

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Trends.indd 34

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multi-city channel meet

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igabyte India has announced the commencement of the Gigabyte channel meet for channel partners. Covering non metros and upcountry towns, the channel meet will be held mainly to popularize Gigabyte’s H55, P55 and X58 motherboards to dealers in these regions.

The meets will be held in Pune, Nagpur, Indore, Bhopal, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Ranchi, Beharampur (Orissa), Jammu and Berahmpore.

Through this meet, Gigabyte aims to familiarize the dealers with the features of H55 such as USB 3.0, USB Power Boost, Smart6 PC management tools, Dynamic Energy Saver 2 and DualBIOS. “Our main aim in organising this meet is to disseminate more information and technical know-how to channel partners for Gigabyte H55 series motherboards. This will help us build channel & customer base for core-I segment,” said Rajan Sharma, General Manager, Sales & Marketing– Gigabyte India. “These regular channel meets are essential, as important product information and latest technologies are put on prominent display at the meets, thereby ensuring prompt feedback from partners,” he further added. n

Pitney Bowes on expansion mode

P

itney Bowes, a leading provider of mailstream solutions, is on an expansion mode and is looking for partners to expand the sales and deployment network for its specialised products – a range of inserters, folders, address printers, secured tax meters and franking machines.

According to KM Nanaiah, the US-based corporation’s Managing Director for India.

“We are the only vendor that provides the complete mailstream solution – from the creation of text to the final appearance of the mail piece.”

KM Nanaiah, MD (India), Pitney Bowes A critical part of the company’s value proposition is the intelligent software it bundles along with its products. The software enables the company and its partners to focus on various customer applications, including location intelligence and mapping, trans promo, variable data printing and customer communication management.

Currently, the company has about eight solution provider partners and wants to take this number to around 20 in a year’s time. Unlike the low-margin hardware business, says Nanaiah, Pitney Bowes can offer its partners upwards of 7% profit margins.

Among the segments that are most conducive to business for Pitney Bowes are government organisations, BFSI and telecom.

The company believes that the IT partners can play an increasingly important role in growing the customer base and tapping into more emerging business opportunities. One such example is the new degausser, a device for cleaning hard disc drives before disposing them off. “Given the growing security threats and business risks to organisations, there’s a growing demand for such products,” says Nanaiah. n

SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:52:23 PM

analyst speak

4

MYTHS ABOUT

IT SELF-SERVICE

Gartner analysts throw light on factors that prevent organisations from successfully delivering IT self-service

F

ollowing extensive client research, Gartner analysts have identified four common myths that organisations have regarding IT selfservice. Gartner believes that these myths and the associated realities, in combination with low IT service desk maturity, are the factors that prevent IT organisations from successfully delivering IT self-service.

MYTH #1 End users will flock to self-service.

Reality: End-user acceptance varies greatly.

Understanding the adoption of IT self-service by end users is critical in developing a successful IT self-service strategy, and most organisations will find that the first-year adoption rate can be very low.

End-user utilization is the primary objective, so the time and cost investments that are tied to building a world-class self-service portal will not yield favorable returns if end users are not inclined to log their own tickets or attempt to solve their own problems.

Factors that can provide insight into this include an organisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s demographics; groups like engineers or young people may be able and willing to leverage self-service, but end users who are stuck in their ways or who are not sophisticated computer users may not be as willing.

MYTH #2 IT self-service reduces costs.

Reality: IT self-service will reduce Level 1 support.

IT self-service does have the opportunity to reduce the cost of IT service and support by moving end-user issues to a lower cost level. However, self-service works well only for specific record types, so organisations should understand that implementing self-service will reduce volume only for those call types.

Some issues will still require a call to the IT service desk and/or the assistance of a support technician.

MYTH #3 IT self-service is a one-time investment.

Reality: IT self-service requires constant care and feeding.

IT self-service is not a "set it and forget it" option, and IT leaders need to constantly

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IT selfservice is not a â&#x20AC;&#x153;set it and forget itâ&#x20AC;? option, and IT leaders need to constantly understand how IT self-service is being leveraged.

End users want an IT self-service portal where knowledge is readily available, where passwords are easy to reset, and that is very intuitive to use.

understand how IT self-service is being leveraged, and whether end users are getting value from the offering.

End users can be aware of the existence of IT self-service support and still not understand how it functions, how it can and should be leveraged, or the benefits it can provide. This requires marketing efforts, specifically to users who may not be aware or users who do not find value in the offering or prefer calling the service desk.

Ongoing efforts also include the maintenance of the knowledge base where ar ticles need continuous updating.

Articles that do not fix the problem or that are difficult to understand do not lend themselves well to the credibility that IT self-service portals need to establish.

MYTH #4 IT self-service is easy to implement.

Reality: The right "companion" tools and processes are prerequisites for a successful implementation.

End users want an IT self-service portal where knowledge is readily available, where passwords are easy to reset, and that is very intuitive to use.

It is not the responsibility of the end user to dig through knowledge if it is not stored correctly, or care about any processes or roadblock issues that prevent the support organisation from keeping the site fresh and up to date.

The two most frequent call types are how-to requests and password reset. Because password problems make up 20% to 30% of all IT service desk volume, with most of those issues resolvable by password reset tools, automating this function can save organisations the costs of supporting this type of request. n

SEPTEMBER 2010

9/10/2010 7:12:17 PM