Strengthening regional foothold and channel base

Ethos technologies started its operations in the region around two years back and since then the company has witnessed an upward swing in business. We talked with Imtiaz Ghani, General Manager of Ethos Technologies on what strategies have amounted to growth for the company and its channel.

Despite the recent market slowdown, Ghani states with pride that the year has been very fruitful so far. He adds that even a slow paced market needs to be viewed as a growth potential offering an opportunity to expand rather than a hindrance. “This is the time when the market should invest and take advantage of lower overhead costs and abundance of skilled resources.”

Imtiaz Ghani, General Manager, Ethos Technologies

Apart from making the right investments, for a distributor to survive and succeed in this highly competitive market it is very important to have the right set of vendors on-board and offer a comprehensive, all-rounded portfolio to the channel. Working on this ‘ethos’, the company regularly communicates with its partners to make sure that they are able to offer complementing products to address all customer needs. “As an example, we have server, storage and networking products in our portfolio. So, when we expanded our product line, our focus was not to simply add more vendors but to on-board complementary product vendors for cables, rack, CCTVs, firewalls, UPS, cloud offerings, etc.”

Further, since the role of the distributor has gone much beyond traditional box moving, it is imperative to support the channel in every way possible. “Right from the beginning, our approach has been to gauge what the channel needs and then build a business strategy that facilitates them. The channel needs good logistics partner along with pre- and post-sales support.”

According to Ghani, the channel is challenged by shortage of resources, especially in pre-sales. “We have a strong team that is both sales and technically certified by all our vendors. This team offers pre-sales support to the partner and also accompanies them to the customer as technical and sales experts, as and when required.”

The company’s main differentiator, he adds, is having technically certified team rather than a big sales team that brings in the leads to one technical staff. “To ensure that our personnel are competent enough to discuss and match our portfolio with customer requirements, we train them on competing products as well. Credit line, logistics, etc. are options that many distributors can provide, however, offering skilled resources that not only work with Ethos but offer expertise to both partners and customers is what makes us stand out from others.

Ghani concludes saying that adding a territory or on-boarding more vendors will not be the company’s prime focus this year. Going forward, the company plans to continue to consolidate its current presence in the region, restricting expansion plans for the next year.

Comments

Comments