As the Country Manager for Serena Software India, Keshav Prakash believes in the need to continue managing a change in the enterprise IT environment. The channel is core when it comes to bringing this change about. On an expansion mode in the country, Prakash indicates a greater channel focus in India this year.

Please elaborate on your channel initiatives for 2006.
We have just finalized a new distribution strategy that is designed as a three-tier model in the country. We have just rolled it out and we would follow it up with increased media and promotional activities. This apart, we also intend to start more training programs for our partners to keep them updated on the latest developments from the Serena stable. Participating in industry forums and platforms, organizing road shows, sponsoring events and allied activities would also form an integral part of our channel initiatives in India.

Keshav Prakash, Country Manager, Serena Software India

What exactly is your three-tier distribution model? How would it aid your expansion plans?
Our focus for the year is to expand our channel network across the length and breadth of the country. As a first step, we have introduced the three-tier model to beef up our distribution network in India. We would sign up a national distributor, new VARs and resellers, who will form the foundation for this model. We are contemplating on appointing at least one reseller in every city and right now we are at the stage of finalizing key partners for all the three tiers.

Serena has also started a new initiative called the 'Authorized Compliance Partner Program' to create a new ecosystem of partners. This program is designed to help customers minimize the time and cost of achieving compliance – including Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and others. We hope to build on that as well.

Currently, we are based in Bangalore and are considering spreading our reach elsewhere. Our three-tier program is also working in the same direction to help us gain the maximum geographical spread in order to service the best to our clients.

What qualities are you looking for in your channel partners?
Partners will be selected on their expertise areas. We would be targeting software development companies, which caters to almost all the verticals like – manufacturing, retail, banking, finance, insurance and defense and public sector undertakings.

Initially, partners would be selected based on their strength in the key targets that Serena's solutions can immediately address. These would include software development companies that cater to verticals like manufacturing, retail, banking, finance, insurance, defense and pubic sector organizations.

As far as resellers go, we would be considering their existing range of products, their client list, expertise in software development tools market, sales model, geographic presence etc.

Would these partners include those in the tier-two and tier-three cities as well? How different would be the distribution strategy for the metros and smaller cities?
We are looking for partners across metros, A and B class cities in India. We would have the distributor to play the fulfillment role and VARs to penetrate and generate new clients for Serena.

Our Indian channel strategy includes finding partners for metros as well as for the A and B class cities. As a matter of priority, we would certainly look into finding partners in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. The distribution strategy is not limited by geography, but rather on the expertise of the partner, be it distributor, VAR or reseller.

What assistance would Serena provide its partners to facilitate them in reaching out to customers?
We would provide the necessary knowledge transfer, sales trainings, marketing assistance etc. Serena will invest in providing training and education for its partners to bring them up to the mark, not only in the sales and marketing, but also to equip them technically to support our solutions and ultimately, our customers.

Marketing assistance is also made available to our partners. As far as post-sales services of our solutions go, it would depend on the partner again and we expect the first level of support to be through VAR's. We have a 24x7 telephonic support facility with a toll free number in India to facilitate after sales support for our national customers.

In addition to your partner friendly policies, what gives Serena an edge over its competition?
We have a significant market share across the globe and we are among the most popular of brands. With a history that dates back to 25 years, we can easily boast of offering the best of the breed solutions in this space. Our solutions are easy to implement, use, manage and offer significant productivity gains quickly with higher return on investments. This has in fact been a strong selling point for us against our competitors.

The biggest strength in Serena's offering is the fact that we can provide our customers with end-to-end solutions in change management, from prototyping of requirements to requirement management, version control, process control, IT assets control, all the way to build and release.

To what extent does change management solutions help a company in making significant savings?
Serena's products provide immediate RoI and efficiency gains for their customers. Different customers will experience different results depending on the different solutions implemented and the scale.

What is Serena's present turnover and what kind of growth are you expecting in this FY?
Serena has just ended the third quarter of 2005 with the quarterly turnover of $64.9 million and it has grown at 15 percent. The company is planning to double its strength in Asia and India along with China and Korea, which are the key growth drivers. We intend to continue to grow, and India is certainly going to play a far greater role than before.

Subbalakshmi BM

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