DQCI Excellence Awards: Solution Partners Day Of Glory

It was an evening that the solution provider community will remember for a
long time to come. The DQ Channels India Excellence Awards were an effort to
appreciate them. The best performing solution providers and systems integrators
(SIs) in India were honored at the first ever awards of its kind held in
Bangalore on January 15. 12 awards were given away in six categories, adjudged
by a panel constituting senior industry representatives from IBM, AMD, APC and
Ingram Micro.

The event got off to an interesting start with a panel discussion on 'Aiming
For The Quantum Leap-Opportunities And Challenges'. The panelists included
AMD Far East Marketing and Business Development's Director, Mukund Ramarathnam;
Juniper Networks India's Channels Manager Harvinder Rajwant, SAP India's
Director (Solutions) R Ramakrishnan, Ingram Micro Group's GM (Enterprise
Solutions) Sanjiv Mehrotra; Network Solutions' MD Sudhir Sarma along with
Visesh Infotecnics' CEO and MD Sanjiv Bhavnani. CyberMedia Publications'
Editor-in-Chief Shyam Malhotra moderated the entire discussion.

The panelists discussed various avenues for growth in the solution providing
space for SIs and solution providers, including international and domestic
opportunities. "There is plenty of potential in metros and small cities,
especially in areas like IT enabled services and banking," said Sudhir.

Concurring with his view, Ramakrishnan added that the SMB segment also had a
lot of promise. Sanjiv Bhavnani urged SIs to look beyond India for growth
opportunities and cited his company's experience in successfully implementing
a project in Thailand.

Taking a different tack, Harvinder suggested that solution providers need to
look deeper into customer needs and added, "They can go in for more
granular and in-depth solutions for the same customer."

Most panelists also agreed that taking a vertical specific focus or getting
into a niche field could also be a good way to grow. Elaborating on the point,
Ramakrishnan said, "It is proving impossible to provide customers a
complete set of solutions, so one should focus on a specialized market. It is
all a question of getting the right niche."

On the topic of prospective hot areas of growth, security and the SMB segment
emerged as popular choices with panelists. While Sudhir put betted on enterprise
management and IT infrastructure management, Sanjiv Bhavnani felt that retail
solutions, SMB and mobile telematics were good areas.

GRADUATING TO

THE NEXT LEVEL

Solution providers are faced with the issue of how to move above their
existing orbit, especially when there are opportunities existing on the next
level. Sanjiv Bhavnani feels that these opportunities lie in several unexplored
areas and industry verticals. But he cautions that systems integrators have by
and large not reached a maturity stage of going overseas while seeking
opportunities. So they should focus on working hard, finding the right market,
and possibly adding more value to their own business.

While talking about opportunities nationally Sudhir highlighted that these
existed in every single city. "The challenge to grow is to not to just
focus on end users, but also try and look at their businesses. It is to try and
understand what problems customers face, especially in the SME space, which most
of us address and then come back with the right solution."

Harvinder noted that there is no dearth of opportunities in this market,
especially in the government vertical. "Several SMBs want to become as big
as other IT companies they look up to. And all of them require technologies in
some form or the other, which means that the growth is there," he said.

THE RIGHT VERTICALS

TO ADDRESS

After establishing the existence of opportunities, the panel dwelled on the
most interesting products and services that can be offered to customers. Shyam
mentioned that growth comes essentially in three ways. "You can grow by
having customers in the same geographies, you can go to new geographies, or you
can have new products and value additions for the same set of customers,"
he noted while prodding the panelists to add their comments to this subject.

Harvinder felt that opportunities could be defined as those that existed in
the market, product lines or customers. "If you are working along side your
customers, their requirements as per what products and solutions they are
looking for, is going more granular," he added.

This means that a partner should look deeper into the customer's
requirement and find out what more he can offer them. Mukund added that partners
should also offer services and products they may not be familiar with currently,
which they ought to add to their portfolio. "You must invest in some skill
set. To reach the top, you may not necessarily have all the technical expertise,
but it is worth spending some time and trying to find out what specific skillets
you can imbibe," he suggested.

Sanjiv Mehrotra presented his observation that one way Ingram Micro has 

witnessed some of its solution partners develop faster is geographically or
by penetrating deeper to reach customers. "Some people are more successful
if they take specialize in certain verticals, rather than be a generalist and
try to sell everything," he noted. But it is important that if one has to
be successful in a specific market, then one has to learn the rules of that
game.

MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE

Shyam Malhotra quipped that the solutions business is like a buffet spread and
partners have to choose the right dish to suit their palate. But how does one go
about making the right choice? Sudhir pointed out that this was a complex
situation, because there is no clear-cut game plan to go about it. "When we
started off, we knew just one thing and it was that we would be sincere and
focused about whatever we do. We decided to choose to take a segmented approach
and targeted MNCs, EOUs and the financial sector as our customers," he
reminisced. He added that as a partner progresses to solution integration,
things become more complex as there is also a software piece that is part of the
entire package.

“Partners may not necessarily have all technical expertise, but it is worth spending some time and trying to find out what specific skillsets you can imbibe”  - Mukund Ramarathnam,  Marketing and Business Development Director, AMD Far East “Several SMBs want to become bigger and hence require technologies in some form or the other. This means that the growth is there”  - Harvinder Rajwant Channels Manager, Juniper Networks India  “It is proving impossible to provide customers  a complete set of solutions, so one should focus on a specialized market”  - R Ramakrishnan Director (Solutions), SAP India  “Some people are more successful if they specialize in certain verticals, rather than be a generalist and try to sell everything”  - Sanjiv Mehrotra GM (Enterprise Solutions),  Ingram Micro India “The challenge to grow is to try and understand the problems customers face, especially in SME, and then come back with the right solution” - Sudhir Sarma MD, Network Solutions “Opportunities lie in several unexplored areas and industry verticals. But SIs have not reached a maturity stage of going overseas to seek opportunities” - Sanjiv Bhavnani CEO and MD, Visesh Infotecnics

Sanjiv Bhavnani agreed and recollected how when Visesh started looking at
software projects, it did any software project, designing, writing the
specifications, and doing complete design as well as doing high-end project
management on a larger project. And given that there was a lot of competition in
the Indian market, it decided to look at other developed countries, which were
away from everybody's focus.

RISK TAKING

An integral part of growth is taking risks. But the key question is the
amount of risk that can be taken and how to weigh the pros and cons of taking
it. The panelists were unanimous that anybody who is in business has already
decided to take some risk. Therefore risk evaluation is something that is
intrinsic to each company.

But at the same time, partners have to answers questions like how many things
are in their favor, do they have the finances for funding a new venture, do they
have the resources to take care of their existing business, etc. Harvinder
quipped that he would call the process as determining the market potential
rather potential of the market, rather than risk taking.

While agreeing that all entrepreneurs take risks, Mukund advises making
trade-offs using the right criteria. Sanjiv Mehrotra talked about the successful
execution of the alliance model, where some partners bid for larger
opportunities with the help of like-minded solution partners.

Talking about fund management, Sanjiv Bhavnani noted that organic growth is
natural to most organizations as long as the management is focused, though his
own company took the route of inorganic growth as well. This has helped it
generate money through internal accruals and it did not have to worry about

getting funds from outside the company.

Besides managing finances, retaining people is a huge challenge for solution
partners as well. Like Shyam pointed out

the one thing that really comes in way of growth is an entrepreneur's ability
to build a team and find like-minded people. While agreeing that attracting and
retaining people is a difficult task, one suggestion that was thrown up was to
seek people from smaller towns, people who might not have fancy degrees, but who
have the right attitude in life.

Said Sudhir, who has emulated this strategy, "We give them a lot of
opportunity and put them intensive training. Once people are given the growth
path in the organization, chances are that they don't look out for
opportunities elsewhere." He also ventured that giving employees stakes in
the organization also gives them an impetus to perform well.

All in all, the panel touched upon several issues that a solution provider
faces or is likely to face when it comes to upscaling up the value chain. All
lauded the selection of the theme. And everyone left home with some food for
thought.

VINITA BHATIA