The COVID-19 crisis is having a significant impact on the distribution industry, and it is affecting each company in different ways. The extremely valuable products in this time are facing a surge in demand that is hard to manage from both ends. On the other hand, some products are in markedly low demand due to store and business closings.The “new normal” is not only about from where to work, but it is also about how companies view their partners in business. A more holistic approach to business partner relationships will serve to strengthen the core business delivery process and better prepare themselves for the major future uncertainties.Amidst this,businesses have to keep their employees safe and consider their wellbeing first and foremost.
In this unprecedented time, logic and planning easily fall to the side. Customers and distributors push the panic button, amplifying pressure on suppliers and stress testing the entire supply chain. More time is spent on panic than patience.
For businesses and industries it is a big task to flip the patience-to-panic ratio. It’s hard to take a step back in such a chaotic environment. But it should be kept in mind that no single company or person is going to be able to get through this alone, there should be collectiveness.
POSITIVITY TO PLAY A VITAL ROLE IN OVERCOMING CHALLENGES
V. K. BHANDARI
CMD, Supertron Electronics
“Hit by the Covid-19 slump followed by social distancing and a nationwide lockdown, businesses have experienced major impacts no matter how established they are and are having to re-look at how they manage and operate their business. The challenges for most businesses to keep their financial wheels turning during the lockdown period due to less revenue churn. This unprecedented situation brings challenges and likewise new opportunities. From IT prospective businesses are slowly coming on track after the lockdown period is over.
We see there is opportunity both in consumer and commercial space for IT requirements. These opportunities are mainly due to unprecedented cultural change of Work From Home & Online education and these opportunity expected to continue.
There is supply chain issue with most of the vendors during lockdown and post lockdown but each one of us vendors/distributors are trying their level best to manage the show effectively and efficiently.
Positivity is going to play a vital role in overcoming the challenges. Since the economy is opening up and IT infrastructure investment going to increase for most of the organisation as usage of technology is the key for driving the business. Government is looking to invest heavily on health, education and other related sectors which would open up opportunity for all our partners to play a role. Few important aspects we all need to change in our thought process and approach:
• Accept the change as positive
• See the change as an opportunity
• Adapt plans as necessary
• Quickly master new technology, process and approach
• Need to be flexible in implementing certain action which has not been experimented earlier.”
THOUGH MARKET IS FACING DIFFICULTIES BUT MANY NEW OPPORTUNITIES HAS BEEN GENERATED
MANOJ GUPTA
Managing Director, Fortune Marketing
“Fortune Marketing Private Limited – being a distribution house of IT and Security Products, we have to face a lot of difficulty in this phase. The IT industry has been India’s crown jewel in our country’s economic growth story for the past two decades and the IT industry has provided global recognition for Indian youth’s technology and entrepreneurial capabilities. The current situation due to lock-down has also affected the Indian IT Industry with lots of challenges and shows path to many opportunities.
To ease out the situation and bring the normalcy in the business, we are trying our hard to reach out to our partner through various channels. Our team is also putting effort to understand the market sentiments. Considering the new normal during this situation, we are trying to take feedbacks from our partners to understand their problems and try to solve them to bring back the normalcy.
We are trying to interact with all India level business partners with virtual conferences where we share our ideas to re-initiate the business. Also, we are bringing up new technologies in the market – where the demand has been increased due to covid-19 pandemic.
I can see fastest revival of the IT Industry in coming days – even with more energy and more aggression. And if we consider past few months – we can witness the downfall of market and industry but along with that there are many new opportunities that has been generated.
Looking at the current scenario, this is huge drop in the demand of our regular products. But since, we have products like Wi-Fi Routers, Dongle and other networking products which is quite required in the Work From Home environment. So, we are trying to push those products through our channels. Also, we have come up with few more products which are very much required in this pandemic situation. Products like Infrared thermometer, Face recognition and temperature detection, body temperature detection cameras are few of our product lines which has seen good demand.
The aftermath of the pandemic will also provide an opportunity to learn from a plethora of social innovations and experiments, ranging from working from home to large-scale surveillance systems. Now most of the organization have learnt from the current situation and will adapt to digital transformation and cloud adoption will see a surge.
I believe there would be an increased role of the leadership in providing direction, energizing teams and connecting the dots. Periodic online meetings will be the new norm to synchronize work force. There would be a sudden requirement for solutions for tailored communication tools catering to different scenarios, result-oriented performance management at all levels – individual, team enabled by digital dashboard.
Past few months have been tough for every player in IT industry, but I can assume that very soon we will bounce back and things will become normal. My only suggestion is – although our traditional products have taken back seat for a while – we have to look for opportunities in product lines as we have to survive under this situation to manage our financial needs. And being optimistic in this situation will help us to reach our goal.”
STRONG FUNDAMENTALS OF THE INDIAN ECONOMY TO HELP GAINING BUSINESS RECOVERY
NAVNEET SINGH BINDRA
Country Chief Executive, Ingram Micro India
“It would be no exaggeration to say that COVID-19 has turned our world upside down. When the government announced regulations around supply to essential services, we tried to adapt the new mode of doing business. It was tough trying to serve critical requirements of essential services providers while navigating a host of approvals and passes. The entire Ingram Micro team continued to work tirelessly – either from home or warehouses – to fulfill essential services orders. There were numerous instances where timely fulfillment of technology requirements by Ingram Micro through its partners during the lockdown has made a real impact, like storage for DR for a large PSU, laptops, desktops and UPS to marquee banks & IT/ITES companies, interactive displays for the meteorological department, and many more such critical requirements. Ingram Micro continued to process and execute orders across the country in full compliance with the local regulations.
Communication is absolutely essential and we kept our partners informed of the latest developments through periodic emails. This has in many ways reinforced the need to be in constant touch with our partners both from a business and from an enablement perspective. We conducted a large number of training and webinars in this period and the response was much higher than usual.
Operating under strict lockdown conditions hasn’t been easy but we are very fortunate to have the support of our OEMs and partners. We were able to provide extended credit to our partners, in some cases supported by the OEMs. To help channel partners tide over financial challenges resulting from the slowdown in economic activity, we also rolled out an array of working capital measures under the Ingram Micro Financial Solutions umbrella.
We are confident of a strong business recovery due to the strong fundamentals of the Indian economy. With the relaxation of the lockdown in parts across the country, we are already seeing demand bouncing back. But there is no doubt that it will take some time for customer confidence and holistic demand to return to the peak level. Though the COVID-19 related lockdown has been brutal, the entire industry has become more acutely aware of the need to accelerate digital transformation. Businesses who were already in the Cloud were less impacted than the more conventional ones.
The COVID-19 crisis has been a wake-up call for the industry. We see this as a catalyst for VARs to reskill themselves in technologies like Cybersecurity, Cloud services etc. that enable customers to have a secure and productive remote workforce. They can count on Ingram Micro to support them through our diverse technical and financial solutions. I call upon all VARs to engage with us and leverage our professional services for end-to-end deployment and support.”
CHANNEL ENGAGEMENT SCHEMES IMPLEMENTED TO BOOST BUSINESSES
RAJESH GOENKA
Director, Sales & Marketing, RP tech India
“The initial phases of lockdown substantially disrupted the channel business. The complete restriction on physical movement and transportation put a pause on the routine business. As far as RP tech India is concerned, we were fully prepared to cope up with the situation. All the RP tech branches maintained sufficient stocks to meet the demand and we soon commenced the business in the Green and Orange zones post lockdown release.
We implemented various innovative channel engagement schemes to support our partners to liquidate their stocks and bring their business back on the track. We announced special schemes for Green and Orange zone partners and the response was tremendous. Considering the demand for PCs and other computing hardware, we launched Work from Home (WFH) and Learn from Home (LFM) solutions. Recently, we launched an SSD Upgrade offer for end customers who wish to upgrade their hardware to SSD. This offer also received a positive response from end customers and partners also appreciated RP tech for its value-added support to the channel during the lockdown crisis. We would continue to offer such value-added support to channel partners to earn better ROI and ensure long term business continuity.
The COVID-19 crisis has completely changed the dynamics of the business in India. Hence, channel partners must be creative, innovative and focus on services. The lockdown has opened up many new business streams and VARs need to find out ways to capitalize on the business prospects in the coming months.”
