IBM: "For the Customers" but "By the Partners"!

Anoop Nambiar,
Country Manager - Business Partner Organization,
IBM India

How has been the journey of IBM in the Indian market?

IBM continues to invest billions of dollars to develop smarter systems that enable clients to meet their differentiated workload requirements. Encompassing enterprise computing - server, storage, point-of-sale systems and microelectronics products, IBM's smarter systems are designed to help clients store and move massive amounts of data, analyse it to provide business insight, as well as scale it to meet growing needs and support new ways to deliver the services.

STG is the leader in Server (Power Systems/non x86 UNIX and System Z/mainframes) and external disk Storage in India. IBM also has a significant leadership in the domestic services and middleware space.  It also leads in the development and sale of Linux-based products.

Over the past 40 years, Business Partners have played a key role in helping drive many of the innovations that have led us up to this, the IBM's centennial year. Today, IBM has one of the largest and most diverse channel communities in the entire industry. For example, way back in 2003-04, we began focusing on helping the channel build skills & capabilities to offer client more than just point products to focus on solution selling. That helped us set a strong base for the robust channel network we have today. As a corporation we have constantly redefined ourselves to become one of the world's strongest brands driving innovations that extend way beyond technologies. Today, we run a business model that delivers long-term value and high performance. These changes also reflect the transformation we made in our business partner strategy.

How have you restructured your channel base with the coming of new "avatar" of IBM (post-PC biz sold to Lenovo)?

We have made sufficient changes to align and structure ourselves to partner priorities and support SIs, ISVs and new partners. Each of these requires not just a relationship or a channel management activity but also rest of the IBM to come together and go to market. 

We support partners in multiple ways:

*  Partner relationship managers: They work with our partners on a daily basis either through face to face relationship (CRBP) or tele setup (ICRBP). Also known as end to end relationship managers, they are in turn supported by the business units like software, services, hardware who facilitate them with opportunities and growth.

*  Partner sales support centre: Partner sales support centre facility helps partners in terms of leads, lead progression, closure, pricing and other assistance that the partner would need to close a deal.

*  Marketing support: The marketing teams are armed to extend their help in terms of activities like co-marketing and own lead generation which will be shared further with the partners.

Please cite instances where you have helped your partners to come out of difficult times like recession?

We really walk the talk when it comes to end-to-end partner enablement. When we sold our PC business to Lenovo,  we helped our partners to foresee the market trends and look beyond the PC. Infact, we helped our partners to transform from mere PC sellers to Enterprise class partners dealing in today's talkof-the-town Datacenters, Virtualization and Consolidation. We let the partners continue selling PCs under Lenovo. Today almost 80% of our enterprise partners are fully on board since 2004-05. They trusted us and as a result encashed the long-term benefits of being a solution partner.

Recession in 2009 was a major set back for the industry almost after seven years (2002). We did few things like  extended  payment terms for distributors for  30-45 days. For some resellers, specifically in Mumbai, IBM sales team stepped into  directly engaging with  partners  customers to help expedite speedy payment collection. We also organized city partners contact program in all the metros, on  understanding the issues of partner community  for taking appropriate actions. Our IGF (IBM Global Financing)  with  commercial and channel financing was aggressively promoted  for the partners to  tide over the difficult times. Lastly, we continued to invest in our demand generation activities and enablement fund, and did not cut  down  budget unlike few other competitors, which helped to ensure the pipeline generation  is not impacted.

While writing success story for yourself both globally and in India, how did you work towards partner development?

Over the last two years, we have enhanced our focus around three key pillars - Simplicity, Growth and Profitability. We have continued to deliver on our promise to simplify the way we do business with our Business Partners and help them improve profitability and accelerate growth. We launched city-specific Virtual Branch offices catering to the growing demands of our clients and partners. This began to dispel the myth that IBM was a company that only large enterprises could work with.

Today, we offer our partners the most comprehensive portfolio of solutions across hardware, software and services that they can take to market.  In addition, we have also significantly upped our investments in partner training and there has been tremendous focus on certification. In 2010, for example, we have trained and retrained 1,100 partner representatives across 600 partner organizations in 41 cities, including 250 partner reps trained for IBM software, through various advanced training programmes and product-related training. With partners being so critical to mid-market success, it is important to ensure that they speak the language IBM to our customers. Our education and awareness initiatives will continue to remain a key focus area for us this year and beyond. For example, we recently announced a new IBM Cloud Computing Speciality in India in support of the growing cloud computing opportunity. 

Some of the key factors that are driving business partner momentum include:

Partner enablement - Partners are constantly empowered through trainings and structured programmes to help them move up the membership levels. IBM training can be used to develop the skills necessary for achieving technical IBM product certifications. This ensures solid competency among partners.  

Marketing support - Innovative long-term support for partners leads to lead generation. IBM is helping partners by making marketing assistance available, which can also be leveraged through IBM marketing resource managers as a virtual marketing department. 

Lead generation - Over the years, IBM has worked with top STG partners, also known as capacity partners to scale up their business so they can execute large deals and focus on solutions-centric projects. We initiated lead generation engine for the partners along with Products and Solutions Support Centre (PSSC) which provides a one-stop shop for storage hardware and software.  

We are offering a breadth of technology and tailored solutions to enable our partners to serve to their market needs. We are doing a lot of testing to ensure that solutions and combinations work in that market. For example, IBM Storwize V7000 is clearly the most innovative and easy to use mid-range disk systems with enterprise-class features. This is a hit amongst our partners. IBM is focussing heavily on enhancing partner skill sets across multiple cities through Training and Certification. We continue to introduce creative bundles and packages which are financially attractive to partners and their customers.

What kind of margins do your Partners get?

In order to offer the best value to our partners, we are constantly innovating through various initiatives to enhance their margins / benefits. Early this year, IBM announced a financing program, which included buyback of used equipment and attractive lease terms to help current credit-qualified Oracle-Sun and HP customers in India migrate to upgradeable systems of IBM's new Power family of workload optimized servers and storage offerings. This program also includes IBM cash-back for new or used equipment, attractive lease terms and no payments until early 2011 for credit-qualified clients. This program by IBM leads partners in closing deals that are as low as Rs 20lacs. 

IBM has launched an integrated 360-degree campaign to address the partners which includes marketing, advertising, direct mailers and promotions to drive initial mindshare and awareness for the offering. The partner enablement programmes are currently extended to eight cities in the country and will be further expanded to other cities based on the traction seen in these eight cities. We also have limited period offers and incentives available for partners.

With strategies like global financing, training and certification and various other successful programmes partners are now well equipped to differentiate themselves from the competition and create deep-selling opportunities. 

How is your service network spread across the country?

Our service network indeed spans the length and breadth of the country ensuring we cater to customers across all categories including tier-II and tier-III cities. We have a wide service coverage network with 270 service partner outlets covering 95 locations across India. There are 19 locations that stock parts and are owned by IBM. We also have a 24x7 toll-free call centre that handles over one million calls a year. 

What is the evolution path in the future?

As outlined earlier, we will be aggressively focused on both competitive migrations and market expansion to consolidate our # 1 position in the market. Mid-market for example will be a key focus area for us where we will continue to focus on aggressively increasing its presence in tier 2 and tier 3 cities through our geo-expansion strategy and building our partner base to take our offerings which are tailored to address the requirements of mid-sized clients.

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Vivek Gupta,
Director,
Ablaze Infosys

To be precise in the 4.5 years long association with IBM, we have been able to include IBMs Sys x, SSG, Power, Tivoli, Lotus, Data center set up & Hosting as our offerings. IBM GTS offering has helped us compete against Larger SIs on Data Center space. IBM has some of the best  programs for partner & their employees.   

Memorable moment:  Win against Itanium opportunity.

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Sandeep Jain,
Director,
Aryan Computers & Peripherals 

STG (Servers & Storage), SWG (Software Group) & GTS (Global Technology Services), almost the entire range is taken care by Aryan. In the five year long association, we have come a long way from being a pure hardware player for existing set of customers to selling solutions addressing business needs of our existing customers as well as acquiring newer Customers. The secret of this business is that solution selling is more rewarding, as major chunk of margins lies in deployment & post-sales stage. We are now known as a Technology Partner of IBM.  

Memorable moment:  Thanks to IBM team support we were able to close a BCRS (Business Continuity & Resilience Services) deal in Kanpur. 

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Piyush Vibhakar,
Director,
Insight Business Machines (P) Ltd.

Associated with IBM for around 13 Years, deals with IBM Servers, Storage, Lotus, DB2 & Tivoli. With the change in the companies focus we realized that our offerings were incomplete. And, now we are able to offer end to end Solution to our Customers. IBM as a brand is popular amongst consumers and amongst partners because of its Skills building and Marketing support. From pre-sales to deployment to post-sales, being a solution provider, we benefit at all the three levels though the percentage would vary.   

Memorable moment:  Winning against stiff competition on a recently concluded deal by offering total solution stack from IBM. 

For more contact:
Syeda Beenish
beenish@varindia.com