Paying Off Well In Hierarchy

“Previously, the company consisted of Initial partners and Gold Partners.

But now, according to the demands of industry, the partners are now segregated as SAR and VAP”

Pradeep Ghosh, National Manager, Domestic Business,

Stellar Information Systems Limited

Pradeep Ghosh who is the National Manager for Domestic Business heads the Channel Business in India. Next in the hierarchy is the Regional Sales Manager numbering three for North, South and West who is followed by Business Development Managers (BDMs). Further down the line are Executives who are in direct interaction with the channels.

Stellar Information Systems is one of the pioneers in data recovery since 1993. An ISO 9001:2008 certified company; headquartered in India and having its operations in USA and Europe, the company provides data recovery software and services. Stellar specializes in data recovery for all kinds of media and operating systems. With an R&D team of more than 60 personnel, with more than 39 professionals the company focuses on indigenously developed tools and techniques, besides confirmation to Class 100 clean rooms labs.

The company has two basic business units; domestic and international. The ratio of direct to channel in domestic business is 85 percent to 15 percent. The company is registering a steady growth in channel business and is keen to address it.

With proven records in resolving logical data recovery needs, Stellar leads the queue with its splendid bouquet of software for disk recovery, e-mail repair, file repair, database repair, data safety and erasure and password recovery. Accomplishing data recovery, the company also offers flawless solutions to problems like accidental formatting, users' mistakes, virus attack, system software bugs and more; for almost every operating systems including Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, Linux, and Novell.

Product

As per standard offering in services, the company provides free consultation to everyone on recovery aspect when a system crash takes place. It also provides an analysis of the crashed media. In terms of a contractual aspect of our service, there are predefined rates based on committed volume. Besides discounted pricing and credit facilities, the company also has a free media pick-up and drop facility.

In terms of product, categories are diversified according to segments and consumer needs. In the disk recovery part, Stellar Phoenix range of drives are specially designed and developed to address data loss from various operating systems, such as Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, Linux and Novell for all most all cases of data loss. There are tools to recover lost or deleted photos, music files, videos and data from iPods, CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray disks. The company also has an e-mail repair software to repair and restore lost, corrupted and damaged e-mails from various e-mail clients or servers. Next in line, is file recovery software that is a handy tool to recover lost, deleted and corrupted Microsoft Office documents.

Further, next series offer database repair service that offers a comprehensive category of database recovery software to repair and restore various corrupted or damaged database files. As permanent data erasing is prime concern for any business, the company recently comes up with data safety and erasure service, which automatically backs-up data and wipes it. Also, forgetting passwords is a common phenomenon and leads to a panic situation. Stellar Phoenix password recovery software can retrieve lost or forgotten passwords and serial keys.

In the domestic business a model of hierarchy is followed. Primarily, on top are the gold partners followed by value added partners (VAP). In the bottom lies stellar authorized reseller (SAR). In the hierarchy, one needs to qualify the minimum business commitment level for each of the partner sets.

However, earlier in the domestic pattern, the company only had initial partners and gold partners. But now, according to the demands of the industry, have segregated the partners as SAR and VAP and have tried to involve both types of entrepreneurs as fraternity beginners to data recovery business.

As the company has realigned its channel strategy, there is a gold partner in Kolkata, followed by VAP's in Bengaluru and Patna and SARs in various metro cities and state capitals.

In the international format, the company follows a level structure, where starting from level 1 it appoints affiliates, in level 2, resellers are placed followed by Level 3 partners who are the distributors. In the final level, Level 4, only OEM partners fit in.

The company also provides technical support and marketing support with voice and online technical support on all weekdays.

The company has ambitious and time-bound channel plans to increase the channel presence, and is receiving a overwhelming response from the channels partners all across the nation through its ongoing on-line campaigns. The company is keen in developing a channel market before setting up growth parameters for channel business.

Avishek Rakshit

(avishekr@cybermedia.co.in)