New team takes charge at Confed Annual Summit

Kodaikanal : The 2nd Annual Summit of Confed-ITTA concluded in Kodaikanal.
The two day event that begin on December 13, 2008, saw the convergence of more
than 400 channel partners from 17 IT associations across South-Coimbatore,
Erode, Dindigul, Vellore, Trichy, Madurai, Salem, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin,
Tirupur, Kanyakumari, Nilgiris, Puducherry, Chennai (ITTA & Sneham) Cholamandala
and Karur. The summit was inaugurated by Raja Govindasamy, Principal,
Thiyagaraja Arts College Madurai.

In his inaugural speech Govinadasamy spoke about the strength of channel
partners. He also stressed the importance of spending time with families despite
a hectic business schedule.

President speak

In his presentation to partners, S Karthikeyan, President, Confed-ITTA thanked
CAMS, Madurai and Microsoft for their help in forming Confed-ITTA. "But for
Microsoft's raids on partners and CAMS action to resist it by convening an all
association meeting in Madurai, TANITA (Tamil Nadu IT Association) wouldn't have
been born. Later, during the meeting in Puducherry, hosted by its association
ITTA on April 15, 2008, Confed-ITTA was born," Karthikeyan reminisced. He also
mentioned the Confed-ITTA mail group that was started by PN Prasad, VP, Confed,
which paved the way for excellent communication among the members of Confed-ITTA.
He stated that most associations fail because of the lack of communication, and
the success of Confed-ITTA was the interactive mail group.

According to Karthikeyan, Summit 2007 was one of the major achievements of
Confed-ITTA during 2007. He mentioned that Summit 2007 infused confidence among
members that they weren't alone, and created a synergy for growth via mutual
co-operation and coordination. He added that the Nagercoil, Tirupur and
Cholamandala associations were formed after being inspired by Summit 2007. He
mention Prasad's contribution in bring the Bhopal association to Confed and
giving it a national status. He recalled the incident involving Lenovo and Acer,
due to their tenders with Elcot (Electronic Corporation Of Tamil Nadu) in
providing desktops and laptops at a subsidized rate and explained the activities
that Confed undertook during those time to the members of Confed gathered at the
summit.

Karthikeyan informed that Confed-ITTA currently has around 1,000 members from 17
associations including two associations from Madhya Pradesh,

Areas of importance

Defining the key areas Confed needs to focus on this year, Karthikeyan mentioned
Com-Com Pvt Ltd, providing statewide service and Confed-ITTA branding
activities. He said that the formation of Com-Com has been well discussed and
debated among the members of Confed and it would be taken forward only if a
majority of partners wanted to. He also said that partners need to find out how
they can implement the idea of having statewide service centers, where any
product that is bought across any of the locations from a Confed member can be
serviced by any member of Confed in any location. Similarly, he stressed the
need to take quick decisions on branding Confed-ITTA, where the logo of Confed
would be present everywhere, starting from their name boards to the customer
invoices, so that a benchmark would be set for members of Confed-ITTA and
support would be provided to those customers with the logo of Confed-ITA.

Karthikeyan said that Confed will be successful the day it ensures that no
partner suffers due to failure in business, due to any reason, and Confed would
support genuine partners. "We should ensure that Confed-ITTA members have best
cooperation, understanding and no issues are personalized. Confed should also
ensure that no genuine partner goes down in business for any reason. Only on
that day, can we say that Confed has really won," Karthikeyan averred.

Expanding horizons

Speaking on the theme of the year 'Expanding Horizons' Prasad explained why
partners should look beyond the stereotypical way of doing business. "There are
lots of factors like growth, marketshare, share holder value, employee value,
attrition and global trends. A partner has to look at all these things and try
to impart value in all his activities. Partners need to increase the goodwill of
the company and try to include service in their portfolio, which remains
neglected in most companies," Prasad claimed.

He told partners to change the way business is done and anticipate more changes.
"One has to review the way that their organization is performing and restructure
it accordingly. They have to bet on their core competencies and should get
exposed to market trends and new products and technologies. Primarily an
organization should have a 7-S framework, which includes structure, system,
staff, shared goals, style, skills and strategy," he said.

On the areas that the partner should consider expansion, Prasad suggested that
servicing large clients, offering SaaS model, open source, training, retail
format store, distribution, application software and support, security,
surveillance products, E-services and green technologies would be some of the
areas that partners can look at. According to him, mergers and expansions was
another good way to grow in the industry and partners can look at options like
cross selling between other partners. "There should be a proper team building
exercise, time management, money management, include factors like USPs while
selling and should never accept any business by force," Prasad told partners.

While the main sponsors like HP Procurve and Samsung made their product
presentations, Microsoft choose this platform for interacting with the partners,
where Vipul Sant, Director-Original Software Initiative, Microsoft India spoke
about the legal issues involved in using pirated software's in the companies and
selling it. He addressed the issues of partners in selling the original
software's of Microsoft.

The summit also saw Chennai-based Sneham and Cholamandala association joining
Confed-ITTA formally.

Ethical practices in business

On the second day of the event, the proceedings started with sponsors Lenovo,
Akruthi Software and Cooler Master making their presentations. Followed by the
vendor presentations all the associations under Confed's belt were asked to make
presentations on their activities.

S Prakash, Secretary, Confed-ITTA made a presentation on the ethical business
practices followed by members of Salem IT Association. Prakash stressed that all
channel partners need to deal with only ethical people in the channel industry.
He also noted that tampering with MRP stickers is strictly against the law and
asked partners to return materials immediately to the distributors or vendors if
they felt any malpractices in MRP stickers. "No dealer should tamper with or
sell materials without MRP stickers and the dealers need to ensure that they
sell only on the MRP price and not the dealer price. The dealers also need to
understand that no vendor or distributor operates in the market with lesser
margins and the channel needs to wake up in this aspect," Prakash stated.

Importance of insurance

There was a couple of other interesting presentations on the insurance front,
where K Babu, Coordinator for Insurance Tasks, Confed-ITTA said that Confed has
insured its members and their staff for Rs 59 crore and requested the new
associations that joined Confed to insure themselves and their staff members. He
also requested the other members, who hadn't insured their staff members to do
so at the earliest. Suresh Kumar Soni, CEO, Auro Enterprises, Puducherry, also
an insurance agent, made a presentation emphasizing the importance of insurance
to each and every individual citing the examples of the four partners who died
in various accidents this year.

Confed-ITTA also awarded students who won the paper presentation contests
conducted by in memory of late Avudayappan, AH Saleem, Ponnarasu and Senthil,
who died in various accidents this year.

New team

In the final session of the Summit, the new team of Confed-ITTA under Prasad
took charge from the current team. The new team felicitated the previous team's
office bearers by awarding them certificates of excellence for their activities
in Confed.

After taking charge as the new President of Confed-ITTA, Prasad said that the
success of the summit had induced more confidence into the new team. He also
said that the new team would try to implement the ideas proposed by the former
President-Karthikeyan and his team. The other office bearers-C Balakrishnan, VP;
A Muthuswamy, Secretary; Vinod Kumar, Treasurer; Meenakshi Sundaram and P
Shanmugam, Joint Secretaries expressed their thanks to members and the
confidence in taking the federation forward. The previous team, including
Karthikeyan, will remain as advisers of Confed, and they promised their complete
support to the new team.

Rendering his vote of thanks, Prasad thanked the sponsors of the
event-Microsoft, HP, Samsung, Lenovo, Akruthi Software, Gofrugal Technologies,
Syntesia and Cooler Master for their support in the event. He also thanked the
members of Confed-ITTA for attending the summit and making it a grand success.
Prasad thanked Coimbatore IT association for bringing in sponsors; CAMS Madurai
for taking care of the event in Kodaikanal; Erode, Salem associations for
working for this summit and the Executive Committee of Confed-ITTA for their
continued support.