Rahul Agarwal
Executive Director – Commercial Business,
Lenovo India
With a channel influence of 85% in its business, Lenovo has directed its energy on creating a strong network and a nationwide reach. Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director – Commercial Business, Lenovo India, speaks on how this has been made possible with the help of Channel and growing the brand across the country.
India has a vast enterprise IT user base, spreading across different cities all over the country. It is a challenge to reach all the prospective customers without a strong channel network. Lenovo has a strong channel ecosystem, which is instrumental in its growth, especially in the enterprise business. “Our channel structure is driven by the need to foster a core channel partner network in India. We consider channel partners as natural partners in profit,” comments Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director – Commercial Business, Lenovo India.
Today, 85% of Lenovo’s India business has a channel influence and it is focussed on creating a strong network and a nationwide reach. “We work with the leading national distributors who work with other vendors on behalf of Lenovo India. By establishing an effective channel strategy, Lenovo has been able to increase channel engagement, thereby boosting growth and profitability,” Rahul adds.
Lenovo’s focus on channels is driven by the need to develop a core channel partner ecosystem in India. Lenovo considersits channel partners as natural partners in profit and has persistently worked towards invigorating its channel relationships to foster a long-lasting, mutually beneficial bond. Lenovo’s channel structure has its channel partners and distributors which include SMB RDs (Regional Distributors), VARs (Value Added Resellers) and retail.
A transparent Channel strategy…
Lenovo believes in creating the right mix of communication, enablement and engagement policies for partners that ensure to foster growth for the indirect channels. “We maintain an open communication with them that helps in garnering feedback from not only partners but also end- consumers,” says Rahul.
Lenovo always believes in implementing fair and ethical practices to grow its business. It has been successful in realigning its strategies to match with the business goals, backed by a comprehensive marketing programme to create awareness. “As incentive schemes are important to drive business efficiently and to increase productivity, we have revamped our partner programme so that partners can earn 50% more on achieving targets. To help our partners to maximize their growth opportunities, we have set up targets for them depending on the vertical and profile, and also introduced reward programmes such as ‘Black Knights’, aiming at rewarding our partners for new business acquisitions,” explains Rahul. By such initiatives, Lenovo has been able to grow a substantial channel base by identifying the opportunities in the specific segments of the market.
The way ahead for Lenovo…
Lenovo relies on its strong relationship with the channel community to extend its reach and considers them as natural partners in profit. Sums up Rahul, “I believe that partners should work in tandem with vendors and have an open discussion with them and the customers so as to forecast the needs that will arise and accordingly invest in educating themselves about trends like cloud computing, mobile computing which are expected to lead the wave of innovation in the near future.”
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