Samsung crowned as the new Channel Champion

Samsung was crowned as the new channel champion at the DQ Channels India's Channels' Choice Awards event held in New Delhi. The Gold Award was

presented to Samsung on the basis of it winning five Gold awards in the Best Hardware Products, Best Marketing Support, Best Post-Sales Support, Best

Commercial Terms and Best Relationships categories.

Samsung was crowned as the new channel champion at the DQ Channels India's Channels' Choice Awards event. The DQCI

Channel Champion Gold Award was presented to Samsung on the basis of it winning five Gold awards in the Best

Hardware Products, Best Marketing Support, Best Post-Sales Support, Best Commercial Terms and Best Relationships categories. 

HP was the runners-up and received the DQCI Channel Champion-Silver Award on the basis of winnning one gold award in Best Online Suppoort categoray and

four silvers in the Best Marketing Support, Best Post-Sales Support, Best Commercial Terms and Best Relationships categories. 

While Intel won two silver awards in the best hardware products and best online support categories, Microsoft won the gold award for Best Software

Products and Symantec, a silver award in the same category. The awards presentation was followed by a Channel Champion Conference on

'How to tackle payment defaults'. The panelists for the conference included Princy Bhatnagar of Samsung, Prasenjit Sarkar of HP, Sanjeev Keskar of AMD,

Sanjeev Bhavnani of Vishesh Infotecnics and Alok Gupta of Softmart Solutions. The discussion was moderated by Pradeep Gupta, Publisher of DQCI

and MD, Cyber Media.



The consensus that emerged was that resellers today in a bid to achieve revenue targets bow down to the market pressure and sell below margins
without checking the credibility of buyers. This was evident during 2002 when resellers who were merely box pushers, sold on credit and were the most

hard hit with this phenomenon.

Defaults take place at all the levels -- between distributors and channel partners, the partner community and end-users and

within the channel community. The problem of default is also accentuated because of low-entry

barriers which encourage any one to enter IT industry to make a quick buck. 

Defaults have been seen from the corporate segment as well. Corporates undertook IT expansion in a bid to achieve revenue targets but now these do

not have the money to pay back. Several measures were suggested to prevent payment defaults:



The margins should be fixed and there should be regular internal audits to identify those parties which delay or default on payments. Immediate legal
action should be taken on the defaulting parties.

Over dependence on a few customers should be minimized as this leads to financial pressures such as tight cash-flows. Inventory holding should also

be minimized so that there is no pressure on the reseller to sell at lower margins.

Following measures were identified to keep a check on the defaulters: 

• Identify and isolate people who default among the channel community. Share
  
  information about defaulters so that they do not dupe more companies. 

• Resellers should be registered with some association and regular meets
  
  should be held and the names of the defaulting parties should be flashed there. The media should play a bigger role in reporting on defaulting
  
  parties.

• DQCI commissioned IMRB to undertake the annual Channel Satisfaction and
  
  Channels' Choice Awards survey. The survey spanned 10 cities where 602 partners cast their votes for vendors to determine the Channel Champions.

CYBER NEWS SERVICE



NEW DELHI