I’ve often wondered why training as a channel for business is not considered a part of hardware or software reselling. Why is training only a part of customer solicitation or lead generation in the form of half-day seminars and not a more concerted pre-sales exercise?
Some of the hardware resellers already have some kind of association with training – distributor Iris Computers in Delhi has a division called Iris Unified Learning for corporate training while a Chandigarh-based VAR has a tie-up with a software training institute. Conversion rates for customers who initially came in for training and returned with PC/server orders should add up to quite a handful.
It may just be another value-add, perhaps just an entry in the payment invoice, but the additional figure should definitely add up to much more than the Rs 50-100 that many PC assemblers quote as their margins. So, for instance, if Bangalore-based company Tally talks of creating an ecosystem of 20,000 resellers to sell its accounting software, I bet these businessmen are going to find as many customers who are willing to pay for learning as for the software itself, which anyway is a value-add to the basic PC.
Business desktops from HP are now available for Rs 19,000 while IBM’s is priced at around Rs 36,000 with a TFT monitor. Consumer desktops are toeing the line that the union IT ministry has set cutting down prices to below Rs 10,000. Where are the margins? If consumers choose Linux over the scaled down Windows Starter edition or a not-so-genuine version of the OS, they may not be averse to be trained for a few extra. With corporates of course it s far more easier, what with training being budgeted in most organizations.
As one industry veteran told me, the assembled segment is bound to settle soon at 15-20 percent levels from the current 45-50 percent, and customers will require more transparency. With the inflexion point approaching fast, resellers who are faced with lesser margins will need to look for new opportunities to enhance customer experiences.