Lifesize to develop tier-2 channel this year

Mumbai: For the current fiscal, Lifesize Communications will be working on enrolling more partners in its tier-2 channel. Currently the company has four tier-1 distributors-Actis Technologies, Enkay Technologies, Intellicon and Plus Business Machines, and another 15 tier-2 partners.

Krishnamurthi Shivashankar, Country Manager-India, Lifesize Communications stated that the reason the company was going slow on channel recruitment was because they wanted to have more product installations in place. “This is because selling video needs an in-depth understanding of several technical aspects and customers too would like to experience it before making a purchase decision,” said Shivashankar.

Now that the company has over 1,400 installations in the country, especially in B and C-class cities, it is confident that more partners will be keen to promote high-definition video conferencing to their customers. Currently, over 7,000 video conferencing equipment were installed last year alone.

Globally, the company's channel network includes VoIP and IT VARs, system integrators, audiovisual (AV) and conferencing experts, strategic OEMs and broadband service providers. But in India, it hopes to do business with only 15-20 percent of the IT channel, while the AV channel and broadband service providers will comprise the remainder.

“Selling video is a very high engagement exercise for the IT channel who are more comfortable doing business which have shorter turnaround period. We are open to working with partners, but we are more interested in having long-term relationships with those partners who are committed to this business and understand how to position high-definition video conferencing over the standard definition products available through our competition,” added Shivashankar.

Lifesize claims that it works closely with these partners and undertakes lead generation activities for them, helping them close the initial few deals jointly. To facilitate business, the company has also brought down its product delivery time to two weeks and is now looking at better stocking options to bring this down even further.

Besides this, the company will also undertake all post-sales service directly without involving the channel. Shivashankar stated that in the contemporary scenario, partners selling standard definition often do business by undercutting product prices. When the product needs service, then the partner is unable to support the customer, which results in the partner losing the customer and the latter becoming disillusioned about video conferencing. “This is why we want our partners to just sell while we will look after the support from our end,” he explained.