Subodh Anchan
Director, Sales and Marketing, iValue InfoSolutions
iValue InfoSolutions recently signed some important strategic alliances with vendors as part of its focus on pursuing year-on-year growth. In a chat with Channel Times, Subodh Anchan, Director of Sales and Marketing discusses the alliances and the plans for channel partners over the coming weeks and months. Excerpts from the interview…
Q: You have entered into some alliances with vendors recently. Can you elaborate on these?
Subodh: Over the last three years we are in to Projects in the BFSI and eGovernance verticals addressing datacenter needs. Also, we manage relationship directly at 200 key customers. We also engage enterprise and corporate customers for various niche offerings. These customer engagements
help us to identify emerging needs and accordingly bring on board relevant solutions.
Q: Can you elaborate on some of the new offerings?
Subodh: Some of the new offerings added during the current year include Algosec – Firewall policy and
change management solution; Propalms – VDI, Application virtualization and SSLVPN solutions; Exinda – QoS of data, voice and video along with compression & WAN optimization solution; Seclore – Information Rights Management offerings where one can control documents and information even after its sent out; A10 Networks – Load balancing of link and servers, SSL acceleration and IPv4 to IPv6 migration management.
What kind of opportunities do the new alliances throw up for channel partners?
Subudh: iValue has been focusing on Digital Asset protection and Data/Network and Application
management offerings over the last 13 years. We have developed focused partner eco system
across the country for each of our vendors. The approach is to align specific solutions with each
of the partners in line with their focus, offerings and customer base. This helps our partners get
quick benefits of our new signups due to high alignment.
Q: What would be the objectives at the top level?
Subodh: The objective is to help our partners get profitable business from current customer base and also help them acquire new customers through our niche and compelling offerings. Algosec offering is a logical extension to Firewall sales; Seclore IRM offering is next stage to DLP implementation. Any business which outsources part of its operation are leveraging Seclore IRM to ensure its done securely with compliance.
Propalms is ideal for Customers in expansion or optimizing mode with ERP/CRM deployments. A10’s load balancing solution addresses application performance challenges of growing business across vertical; A10’s IPv4 to IPv6 solution is of high relevance and demand in Telecom and BFSI verticals; Exinda’s WAN optimization solution along with QoS is being leveraged by Enterprise and Corporate customers to optimize on their bandwidth spends.
Q: Do you have go-to-market strategy to leverage the new business?
We adopt unique go to market approach for each of the new vendors. We arrive at target segments based on the unique benefits of each vendor offerings. Based on the target segment, we chose partners who have customers in those segments. This approach helps us grow business in double quick time benefitting our vendors and channels. For instance, we focus on ERP customers and ITeS vertical for Propalms and A10 server load balancing solution; BFSI and ITeS vertical for Algosec due to multi brand and multi geography deployments with compliance needs; Manufacturing, Pharma, Research & Development verticals and CXO level sensitive data exchanges for Seclore IRM.
Q: What kind of sales approach do your partners adopt?
Subodh: We empower partners as part of the Go to market both on sales and technical front. iValue
approach has been consultative to understand and effectively address customers business and IT challenges. This approach has helped us to be relevant to every business need which has helped in unearthing more opportunities at each of our customers with long term relationship. We encourage our partners also towards business centric approach to stay relevant and grow profitably even during uncertain and challenging times.
Q: Is there a flexibility built into sales model to guard against fluctuations in revenues?
Subodh: Consultative and business centric approach has helped us grow at five times the market growth rates over the last five years. We continue to invest proactively to understand the business and
IT needs of our key verticals, add offerings which are relevant, invest in empowering partner eco system and expand our front end team every year to engage with larger set of customer and partner. We believe this approach will help us sustain growth rates of at least three times that of market growth rates, for our vendors and partners.