NEW DELHI, INDIA: With an objective to expand its presence, Emerson Networks is aiming at revamping its distribution model and has added another set of partners to their existing two tier model.

The newly formed tier will include Network Solution Partners (NSP) and the company has already appointed as many as 20 NSPs including Delhi-based Team Computers, Mumbai-based Orient Technologies and Value Point of Bengaluru.

Emerson will further be adding another 8-10 NSP partners by the end of 2009. In addition the company will also be doubling their enterprise partner or the direct partner base to cater to customers across the country. The company currently has 70 direct partners on board.

Talking about the same, Mandeep Gupta, Country Manager, Emerson Networks mentioned, “As a policy we have certain products that are sold by our channel directly. Hence we have under taken several initiatives for the channel. We have about 70 plus partners in this space and by September 2009 we will increase the count to around 150 partners. Another major addition that we have done to our channel business is adding Network Solution Partners to our distribution structure. This is a large scale initiative and is being carried at the Asia Pacific level.”

For the NSP model, the company will be targeting select large IT solution providers and system integrator partners.

There are two levels to the NSP program. While level two is for the ones who are new to the business, level one will focus on the advanced partners who have the requisite knowledge about the industry.

The company will be assigning an account manager for the level one partners and will also carry out incentives and training programs in addition to carrying out the joint sales calls for them. Level two will include those partner who are eyeing the solutions business and hence will be imparting training accordingly.

“The level two partners will be provided with training but there will not be much of a push on them from our end and the business will be done as desired by them,” added Gupta. He mentioned that the company will work closely with the level one partners wherein it will assign someone exclusively only to look after Emerson product portfolio.

“We have been doing the ground work for this program for the past six months and it is in the advanced stage of being implemented and hence we are now looking for more like-minded partners. We have close to 20 plus NSP partners in the top eight cities and we will be appointing another eight to ten partners as we do not want to overcrowd this space. Earlier our partners did not have access to various solutions offered by us. For example precision air conditioning and data center business was never handled by the partners directly but now we have opened it up for our partners and we are offering them training to further the same,” pointed Gupta.

In addition to this the company is also looking at expanding in the C and D- class cities. The company has as many as 29 branches across India and by 2009 end the company is planning to expand the branches further and will have about 35 branches in cities including Ludhiana, Trichy, Nagpur, Durgapur, Kota, Shimla, Surat and Rajkot.

“All our metro partners have been catering to the upcountry partners. But we want to be closer to the customer which can happen only if we have local partners. Today customers want the product. Thus the winner will clearly be the company that is close to the customer,” stated Gupta.