Cochin partners fight meltdown

Cochin : IT Panchayat, which is organized in association with The DQ Week
and DQ Channels made a stop in Cochin last week.

More than 50 channel partners converged at this channel-focused event.
Presentations were given by Dev Narayanan from Sify and Mohamed Arif from
MicroWorld. On the panel were Eldho from Aldous Glare Trade & Exports, Jaimon
Joseph from Noveon and Harikrishnan PK from Alltime Power Technologies who
represented the channel side, while distributor's side was represented by R
Suresh Kumar from Ingram Micro and Sudesh S from Redington. The discussion which
was moderated by Zia Askari, Associate Editor, The DQ Week, started with the
current issue of financial crunch that is negatively affecting businesses
worldwide. Speaking about the ongoing market scenario in and around Cochin,
Harikrishnan PK from Alltime Power shared, "Our JAS quarter was extremely good
because of the Onam festival, however today we are experiencing a somewhat
difficult situation as people are postponing their buying decisions to some
extent. However, I strongly feel that this will be over by December end as
Christmas approaches," he added.

Dwelling upon the current market scenario, Jaimon Joseph from Noveon agreed that
this is indeed a difficult time, but suggested that the channel community should
look at every possible way to increase their profitability and enhance customer
base as well.

Suresh Kumar from Ingram and Sudesh S from Redington suggested that all the
distributors should keep an eye on the credibility of all the channel partners.
"We are closely looking at all the parameters before giving credit to channel
partners now," they added.

Transparent policies Voicing their concern towards vendor-driven policies on
issues such as DoA or services, all the channel partners present in the
gathering displayed their urgent need for vendors to make their policies as
transparent as possible.

"We urge the distri-butors to take this matter with their respective vendors and
solve our problems. Transparent policies will help us a lot in terms of solving
major issues," Harikrishnan from Alltime added. Expressing his concern on this
issue, Joseph said that if vendors share their policies in writing, it would
become easier for the channel to decide whether they want to work with a
particular vendor or not. Suresh Kumar from Ingram accepted that this issue
surely needs to be taken up with vendors.

MRP and MoP

Channel community present on this occasion strongly criticized the practice that
some vendors follow of placing their products' MRP lower than the MoP. "The
customers goes to the consumer court and face the music. Distributors should
make sure that this does not happen," Eldho from Aldous Glare Trade & Exports
asserted. Reacting to this issue, both representatives from Redington and Ingram

said that whenever such cases have surfaced, the company has done its best to
solve such issues.