/dqc/media/agency_attachments/3bO5lX4bneNNijz3HbB7.jpg)
Follow UsHow bullish are you about the Indian
market as far as IPG is concerned? Where would you position the
Indian market vis-a-vis other countries in the Asia Pacific region?
In terms of growth, China, India, and
some other parts of South East Asia are the emerging markets. And
India is definitely a focus market for
IPG. Here, we want to take
our business to the next level and expand our leadership in the
country. Though we are leaders in the IPG space in the Indian market,
we are looking at making investments in both the traditional as well
as emerging businesses that are being witnessed in the marketplace.
The tremendous growth in digital content, increased penetration of
mobiles and smartphones, movement from analog to digital printing,
and the adoption of service-based model are the few trends that have
made the company quite bullish about the Indian market. Even cloud
computing is going to be one of the biggest drivers for HP IPG in
India, as many of our solutions and services would be cloud-based.
And if we look at India amongst the emerging countries, SMB segment
is one of the major vertical focus for us. Besides large enterprises
and consumer businesses, SMB is the fastest growing segment and this
is definitely our thrust area. We see a lot of potential to increase
printer footprint in this segment, especially for laserjet printers.
SMBs in India look for
cost-effective and at the same time easy-to-manage solutions which
should result in greater RoI. Your comments.
As I said earlier, we are already
market leaders in India and we want to expand it further. There are
two focus areas for us in the SMB segment. Firstly, we want to
increase our marketshare in the space that we play in today and the
second strategy is to look at the above-mentioned set of business
trends and roll out new offerings so that we can enable customers to
take advantage of all these technologies. In India, SMB marketshare
would be in excess of 41%. We have a very strong channel partner
support here in India. Most of the SMBs buy from these channel
partners and one of our core strengths is the immense support we get
from these partners. So, if you see the marketshare of the SMB
segment in India, I am quite sure it will be much more than our
overall share in the country. In the SMB segment, we are also
focusing on education and awareness. TCO is very critical from the
SMB segment. One of the key areas where we are training our people as
well as channel partners is to make the customer aware about the
benefits that HP printing solutions would bring to their business.
The more we are able to train our people and channels on this
concept, the more we are able to communicate to a larger set of
customers and this would result in greater success for us in the long
run.
Did you articulate any particular
channel strategy for the SMB segment?
Our channel strategies are aligned to
the market changes that we witness here in India. Though we will
continue supporting our traditional channel, we are now looking at
engaging with partners who are into providing solutions beyond just
box pushing. The reason being that today customers want solutions
built around products that can make their workflow easier and turn
out to be more efficient for them. While we are known for providing
reliable products, we are also rolling out products that focus more
on making the usability easier for customers. So, we are constantly
making innovation in our products. Furthermore, instead of just
following the traditional way of selling products, which we will
continue to do, HP IPG is also moving towards a more consultative
approach in order to help customers optimize their infrastructure,
manage their printing environment, and improve their workflow. We
also educate our customers on balanced environment. Most of the SMB
customers in India just buy standalone printers but we believe that
it leads to cost inefficiency. The company wants its SMB customers to
look at the bigger picture by doing the assessment of their print
environment and help them save a lot of money. Geographic expansion
is again one of the company's key strategies. The company wants to
make sure that it is not only strong in metro cities but also makes
its products and solutions available across the country. The sales
team divide the cities into different categories and then we engage
with different partners for wider coverage.
How many partners have you engaged
to cater to the SMB segment?
From the channel standpoint, HP's
strategy is to first make the channel aware of its core business and
then make them adopt new businesses. In India, we are working very
closely with around 24 such partners, enabling them to sell
contractual service-based model into the SMB segment. And for this,
we are providing infrastructure support and training to its internal
sales team as well as the channel partners.
Could you throw some light on the
partner enablement/training programs that help them serve customers
well?
We first enable them to sell in the
traditional space, make sure that our products are available, and
ensure that they get right trainings to make the customers understand
our products and increase our leadership in the marketplace. We then,
ask them to move into new space and thus extend beyond the core
business. We have rolled out both online as well as face-to-face
training for our channel partners. There are different levels of
training that our partners can sign in for better understanding of
our products. While we will continue to offer traditional box level
trainings, we are also now training our partners to help customers
understand the assessment process related to the print environment.
So, we have different level of trainings for different type of
partners. For traditional partners, we have normal training on
selling skills, box level, and technical training. But as you go up
on value products, we train them in what value customers can derive
from our products and solutions.
How do you enable your partners to
earn more profit and better margins?
We have a very well established and
comprehensive partner program, wherein partners enjoy good rebate by
selling HP products and solutions. Once they achieve this target,
they also get to deal with value products. These channel programs are
designed in a manner that they give partners very attractive rebates
and margins. Besides, our pricing in the market is very competitive
and thus the channel margin is very stable. The pricing has to be
very critical from the perspective of channel margins. We, therefore,
make sure that street prices are more stable and provide attractive
channel programs so that our partners enjoy a very healthy margin by
selling HP products and solutions.