Customers and partners share a mutual relationship. Neither can progress without the others help. On the partner's part, it is imperative to understand his customer and the business he is in, then only will he be able to gain the confidence of his customer

In the Indian application soft-ware market, every channel partner faces the dilemma over whether he is providing the right solutions or not. Or is he just meeting the sales requirements of the quarter? The real challenge comes to the fore when our customers get agitated with us and show an inclination towards working with some other partners, which is a major cause of concern.

Most of the times, partners look at the research done by the customer for a software application as the barometer. Instead, they should be an active part of that research and should work jointly with the customer on it. When a customer does the research, the preconceived notion turns out to be a fulfillment option for any partner.

Software applications play a pivotal role across verticals in running daily business. So, decision-making has become a management art, keeping in mind processes that need to be followed at the same time.

P Janardhan

The emergence of a 24x7 support has led to increased expectations from a customer. Fierce competition in the market is compulsorily driving customers to have the right processes and systems in place to cater to the demand. They expect their suppliers to understand this and come up with the right solutions.

Customer's business
Solution providers should have a basic understanding of their customer's business area. For instance, which segment does this customer serve and what kind of customers do they have.

Let's take an example. A partner takes up the dealership for a CAD application, out of enthusiasm and sales pressure. He approaches a customer who might be in manufacturing. But this particular CAD application is something he doesn't need at all, as none of his customers use it. A smart partner could have avoided soliciting this customer by asking a simple question: Does my customer need this? If he had forced an existing customer to buy this solution, then the customer too would also start wondering whether the partner knows him and understands his business. If he loses his confidence in the partner and would immediately start looking elsewhere for all his future IT needs.

Partners must plan an exit strategy, which can justify their existence with customers or prospects

Be process centric
Most partners depend on certain human contacts at the customer place. They develop close relationships with a couple of people in the client's office, using them as a single point of contact.

Any change with these contacts usually brings uncertainty into future business prospects. Therefore, a partner should jointly make the IT roadmap with the customer. This is not easy but it is the only way out if one wants to retain the customer's account.If we take into account success stories from some of the big corporations, they too have done the same thing, but in a slightly different fashion. For every new initiative at the customer's end they focused with a new coinage: Consulting.

This has worked wonders. In the beginning, this approach might not generate any revenue for the partner. But over time the partner can streamline his services with a roadmap that the customer can relate to.

To understand this better, a partner can do a little research with the existing customer base to analyze the different or non-related applications the partner has provided to his customer in the last three quarters. The partner can then find out if these offerings were in sync with the customer business or his growth map. If not, then he should consciously make it a point to avoid giving such products and solutions in the future and advice the customer on how to leverage the existing ones best.

Focus: customer goals
Do solution providers read the 'Vision and Mission' document of their customer? If not, then it is about time they did.

Let's take another example here. Imagine you have a customer in optometry manufacturing and branded optical products business with a wide variety of projects running across the country. At each location, the customer engages a different IT vendor due to cost and other service parameters. The customer had got the vision to reach many cities with processing laboratories at the shortest available time.

Now the solution provider has to match the service quality as well as the customer's expectations. His service offerings have to be in adherence with that of the diverse set of vendors that the customer is working with. A contradictory solution provided by him will make the customer move away to some other solution provider.

A smart partner would suggest a process management solution that would help the customer to maintain service uniformity across all places. Doing this will also help the partner outline the different deliverables for different vendors, so that the customer too is aware of some of the impossible aspects of a service arrangement well before he gets into business with the solution provider

The exit philosophy
The sage words in business are 'never miss a deal'. But this is not always possible. A solution provider has to devise an exit strategy well in advance before getting into an agreement with his existing as well with prospective customers. The customer would respect the tangible or intangible benefits of this in the long run.

The words 'exit policy' don't exist for most solution providers, as sales pressure and commit­ment adherence to their principals often take prime importance. But if we look at it from the customer's angle, they do have a planed exit strategy, that's why partners usually reduce the price to get the order. But what partner adds to the business is just billing.

So, partners must plan an exit strategy, which can justify their existence with customers or prospects. The introspection begins with partner when their HR attrition or subsidiary costs start increasing. This situation will never allow adding any value to the customer; let's forget about complimenting the customer business.

Bottomline
Partners have a silver lining in terms of the availability of applications, which complement the businesses of most of the verticals. Customers are also moving more towards enterprise applications to be scaleable and time bound. So the partners face the challenge of meeting the customer's goal and their own goals.

This will happen only when partners attempt a sincere effort to know their customer and business prospects in every possible angle. Then only
can the partner be a catalyst in their customers business. When the partner is a catalyst in the customer business, then only can complimenting
automa­tically happen.

The author is Channel Manager at Ranal Software Technology