The rendezvous with destiny cannot be postponed forever. Thus, it’s essential to draw lessons from the past. There’re a few significant episodes in the pages of channels’ history, too, which have left a lasting impact on their business prospects, along with scar marks on mutual strength and more importantly, on their relationship with vendors.
One such instance is the pipedream associated with the formation of the National Association of Channels of Information Technology (NACIT).
Floated in July 2003, the NACIT got off to an eventful start by creating waves but no sooner was it born, than in an ironical twist of things, all the channel expectations became a thing of the past and the predictions about the dawn of a new day never materialized. While channel watchers would say that NACIT could not take off, as it was an idea before its time, skeptics would go a step further and attribute its failure to unachievable promises.
It sought to make distributors and IT manufacturers accountable to the resellers: an idea too utopian, in itself. Although these factors did contribute towards grounding the initiative before it could make the initial headway, there’s no denying the fact that there are other reasons for the flip-flop as well.
The country’s first national body of resellers failed to live up to the expectations drawn by the channel community. Clash of interest between committee members and the respective regional association heads was one of the major reasons behind the discontinuation of the association. Moreover, there was reluctance by smaller associations to co-operate, as they feared being drawn into the “selfish” trap of big fraternity members and they could not see any value in being part of a national association.
Perhaps the national body lacked the long-term vision, which is a pre-requisite, supported by concrete actions to fructify what it wanted to achieve.
This also brings us to the long time debated issue of the channel unity or the lack of it.
To blame any one individual or a few factors in isolation for the failure of the association will be taking an easy way out where the diagnosis, I am afraid, will be worse than the disease.
It would be harsh to digest, but perhaps, the failure of NACIT only reflects the indifferent attitude of the channels to make the trade more principle-driven, and what makes the failure even more disappointing is the uncaring attitude to learn from it.
Moreover, no serious effort worth mentioning has been made to revive it. The bedlam with respect to IT trade associations continues unabated with a few cities throwing up multiple associations often found working at cross purposes and lambasting each other in the media.
But it’s not that channel unity is only utopian and no result can be obtained if sincere steps are initiated. Partners in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry have left a striking mark by floating Confed-ITA and this platform has already given southern partners an edge to take on giants like Microsoft. The vendors understand the strength of the new conglomerate and are bound to give it the importance it deserves.
There’s no doubt then why the Confed-ITA lately held a key round of deliberations with Microsoft top brass and also suggested a mechanism to curb the piracy menace and how the partners and end users can be dragged towards dealing with genuine software. There’s a genuine cause of these united efforts, in fact.