Zinnov introduces Partner Enablement Framework

India currently has over 11,000 IT channel partners, excluding PC resellers and box pushers

Zinnov, an advisory firm, recently announced the release of a first-of-its-kind ‘Partner Enablement Framework' to help technology companies unlock their channel partner potential.

Highlighting the current landscape and opportunities that are present in the ecosystem, the study also revealed that India currently hosts over 11,000 IT channel partners, excluding PC resellers and box pushers. While 65% of these partners focus on IT/ managed services, 44% of them claim to have solution centric capabilities, while 37% of the current partner base is termed as resellers/ value added resellers.

Furthermore, Zinnov brought to light that the top 10 cities house only about 40% of total partner base in India. While Bengaluru, NCR and Mumbai are the top tier cities, places such as Chandigarh, Nagpur and Cochin are emerging as key tier 2 cities for channel presence. BFSI, Manufacturing, High-tech, and Pharmaceuticals are top revenue generating verticals, with ERP, CRM, and Database as the top workloads.

Commenting on the launched framework, Praveen Bhadada, director, Emerging Markets, Zinnov, said, "Over 85% of the Indian IT revenue is driven by channel partners and principal vendors are increasingly looking to unlock the channel partner potential. We at Zinnov, with our market expertise, have defined a robust partner enablement framework that helps principal vendors to assess the performance of its partners on revenue contribution and partner maturity"
"This detailed assessment further enables companies to define relevant interventions and up level the maturity thereby generating new revenue opportunities in India market", he added.

The study notes that there are several challenges that are currently constraining the growth of the ecosystem. Aspects like lack of focus on new demand generation, lack of investments in market creation & skill enhancement, lower perceived profitability of doing business and talent poaching are the key bottlenecks, it highlighted. Given these constraints, 80% of the channel partners in India remain transactional in nature and are limited in terms of the value that they can generate for the principal vendors. Principal vendors thereby struggle to create an effective channel strategy and end up taking long term bets with limited capability partners. Hence, Zinnov's partner enablement framework is a perfect fitment to not only identify & bridge these gaps between principal vendors and channel partners, but also to enhance the value derived from the relationship. This first-of-its-kind framework also helps assess the revenue contribution & maturity of partners as well.

The study also identified key opportunities that are driving the ecosystem:

 Rapidly growing $32 Bn Domestic IT market that is expected to grow to $100 Bn by 2020 presents significant upside

>50% Indian CIOs highlight cloud, big data and mobility investments as top priorities in FY 14, which indeed generates whitespace opportunities for channel partners

~9.6 mn technologically ready SMB base that is virtually unreachable by direct sales force of principal vendors is a huge opportunity again

Non-linear growth through solution & platform centric models provide better business viability for channel partners