Motherboards-Intel Wins

At the #1 position, Intel continues to dominate the motherboards segment even this year. It seems that there is no one even close to the company when it comes to overall product quality-be it conforming to the specifications, overall reliability, user-friendliness, and diversity of product range. Intel continues to impress partners with its advertising strategies, point of sales material, innovativeness of market development programs, allocation of funds for marketing, and flexibility in conducting localized promotions. The company has also made a mark in providing online support to its channel partners across the country, with the presence of an effective online partner portal that gives richness of online resources with an excellent turnaround time/promptness of the product.

However, despite being the clear winner in this segment, Intel still needs to make some effort in gaining the mindshare of its partners in after-sales support and commercial terms. The reason being that the partners have rated Intel lower than its closest competitor Asus. The ratings suggest that there is a lack of availability and competence of the company's account managers and helpdesk services. Intel also needs to work on the back-end incentives and settlement policies.

Asus products provide value for money, as the ratings are very high on price versus performance ratio. And as mentioned above, Asus has scored over Intel in the after-sales support as it not only has proactive service approach but also has an excellent technical expertise to resolve the problems of its partners. The company not only maintains flexibility and transparency in commercial terms and policies, but is also prompt in communicating the schemes/incentive programs to its channel partners. And as far as relationship management is concerned, Asus has dedicated personnel for maintaining relationships, and is always consistent in honoring commitments made by its personnel to the partners.

Unlike last year, the third position is held by Gigabyte, which has shown good improvement in the userfriendliness of the product. In fact, in terms of availability and competence of account managers and helpdesk services, Gigabyte has left all players far behind. Besides, it has scored high in keeping flexibility in commercial terms as well. It is even commendable to see the effectiveness with which the company manages disruption due to change in staff.

And though AMD was one of the preferred brands last year, it has fallen short of the expectations of the channel partners this time. The company needs to restrategize its plan of action in order to remain in the fray.