Interviews

“iValue has a good mix of niche and popular offerings to ensure profitability for partners.”

iValue InfoSolutions

In an exclusive interaction with Faiz Askari for ChannelTimes.com, Sunil Pillai,Co-Founder and Managing Director – iValue InfoSolutions shared some key insights about his business and trends in the enterprise channels community.

The edited excerpts:

What are the key trends in storage and cloud in the enterprise segment of India?

As a strong trend in the industry, data is doubling every year but IT budgets are growing at 10% levels. Technological trends like storage virtualization, data de-duplication at source and destination are some of the key solutions which are in demand.
Business continuity requirements are driving DR/BCP. Compliance is driving archival offerings. Customers are demanding backup of virtualized and non-virtualized environments with a single tool.

How do you see the acceptance of cloud services in the Indian market?

Another important area which is becoming very strong market is cloud. Private cloud is growing fast in enterprise and eGovernance space. SaaS is becoming popular for ERP/CRM/SCM applications within SMB and large enterprise. Security as a Service is gaining traction – firewall, gateway AV/AS, IPS/IDS.

Please highlight your channel structure in India? Also mention the channel footprint in the country.

iValue has direct presence in 10 cities across India. We have done business with 525+ partners covering national, regional and local system integrators addressing 175+ locations. We engage with national system integrators for enterprise customers and projects. We engage with regional and local system integrators for corporate and SMB markets.
We have focused partners in each of the geography based on customer vertical and product set. We work directly on top 500 accounts to sell the concept and create a need for our partners for niche offerings. We work for specific offerings with specific partners based on partners-customer profile to grow their business profitably.
We have channel focused and vendor focused teams working with partners to help them take advantage of our niche and compelling offerings.

What new opportunities do you foresee for partners?

This business centric approach has helped us grow at 80% CAGR since inception through our focused channel network. We are popular amongst partners for introducing niche, relevant and compelling offerings at the right time for our partner eco system helping them acquire new customers and also gain wallet share with existing customers. We have created a new segment – Data / Network / Application (DNA) management offerings which is the DNA for any modern entity with high connect and relevance.

What are the challenges faced by partners in terms of addressing the needs of enterprise market?

The business teams at iValue have more than 500 man years of relevant expertise in addressing Digital Asset Management needs of customer across size and vertical. The technical and team at iValue with over 50+ certification covering 75+ brands and 125+ products add a lot of value for our partners customers. Business and technical teams compliment our partner skill set and help them win customers. We also take our vendor’s help if required to expedite closure timeline.

How do you ensure better profitability for your partners?

iValue portfolio has a good mix of niche and popular offerings to ensure profitable growth needs of partners. We do not deal with commodity products where the need to add value is low leading to low margins. With niche, relevant and popular offerings, we ensure that partners add customer profitably in quick time. Business centric approach of iValue has helped our partner gain more mindshare with their customer base which we are proud off.

Is there any plans for expanding the existing channel partner base for Indian market?

We firmly work towards enhancing the quality of partner eco system for each of our vendors and not too much worried about the quantity aspect.
The key to sustainable model with partners is to ensure we align the right offering in line with partner customer base and then working along with them to realize profitable revenue. This approach of focused partners for each of our vendor helps us work in a structured way.

Focus thus achieved helps us in expediting results for both our vendors and partners.
Many of our customers have helped us align with new partners. These new partners have further helped us expand our customer base by taking us to their accounts.

How do you motivate partners and the sales team of partners in order to stay active in the business?

Greatest motivation for a sales person is profitable PO. Our GTM and model ensures that our partner sales team closes more such PO’s at regular frequency, achieves target and earn incentives regularly.We are also available for them at any point of time for any part of the sales cycle. We have customer events to create demand and make their life easy on revenue front.
We extend good commercial support with our vendor backing to make their life easy with demanding customers.

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