Princy Bhatnagar, Vice President, Head-Consumer Computing, HCL Infosystem, talks to Faiz Askari exclusively for ChannelTimes, on how HCL Infosystem is planning to expand its channel base in India.
Edited excerpts of the interview
What are your key priorities towards building Channel strength for HCL?
We are working towards strengthening our channel presence. Main aim for this exercise is to build our commercial engagements across two verticals SMEs and enterprises. We will be nurturing relationships with both partners and new customers. Traditionally HCL Infosystem follows a direct model that we have been doing in the enterprise space as well. Now, there is a big shift happening in the way we approach the market. We are now planning to engage the channel community for the enterprise market as well.
What are the key priorities for HCL in terms of channel network expansion?
HCL Infosystem has developed a commercial channel network in the last two years and will continue to add more new partners and new customers in the near future. However, five-six years back it was a direct engagement with SMBs, over the years we have built on the channel infrastructure and now we plan to add more enterprise partners into our existing commercial partner space. Now we are also expanding our partner base for increased geographic outreach and deeper penetration into the SMB segment.
Please share an overview of existing channel footprint in HCL Infosystem’s network?
We are transformation the channel structure at HCL Infosystem. Almost 450 of our SMB partners are being transformed in to solution providers. We have already started engaging with the top most 100 partners to generate more business. The whole point of having partners is to bring new customers to us.
What is the key value that you offer to partners?
HCL Infosystem on the whole offers a large range of offerings. We offer a bigger product portfolio, and focus more on tablets (as there’s a demand for tablets and its applications) and on our multi-brand product portfolio for various brands. So, when a channel partner ties-up with us he has access to all our offerings ranging from PCs, laptops, tablets, services and multi-brand product portfolio. From a customer standpoint – it’s a multiple offering.
A channel partner has an option of choosing his own portfolio for products. Besides, products we offer installation services too, as our partners face a challenge in finding multi-location services across states. This helps us getting multi-state orders. It is a value add that we offer to our channel partners.
What is the roadmap for partner’s business scalability that HCL visualise?
The roadmap for HCL Infosystem is to add value to our partners and grow with partners. With the help of our partners we wish to cover 50 % more. Most of our partners offer multi-brand portfolio from our end we aim to offer enabled support and better business practices that makes sense for our partners will help bring in more partners.