Business partner satisfaction survey and study of opportunitis in Mysore; Tata Information systems Limited (TATA-IBM)

Abstract

TISL started the Business Partner program in 1994 with the intention of increasing it’s market reach and keeping in mind the worldwide trend in the IT industry. However in India the few foray’s by other vendors have not been successful. In the last one year 26 Business Partner’s have been nominated but the program has not been a runaway success. What are the areas that need to be looked into?, What is it that the Business Partner wants out of this relationship?, How satisfied are they with the present setup?. That was the genesis of this project. Over the period of 2 months 17 Business Partners were contacted and a structured questionnaire was administered to them. Based on the responses to the questionnaire and the qualitative inputs that came up during the course of the discussion the following findings were obtained. The Business partners are satisfied with the quality and functioning of the product. However they feel that the pre sales support that they are getting in terms of lead generation and promotional activities is not enough. They feel even though the education and training programs are of a very high quality they are not available regionally and hence they still have the necessity to fall back on TISL for support. But availability of the personnel is a major problem. However once contacted then the support is there. Another problem area is _the payment terms. The BP’s face a severe cash flow problem as most of their client do not pay them the whole amount on delivery. Analysis of the responses threw up two definite segments. One was the box pushers the other the solution providers. The box pushers were more bothered about the discount’s and the payment terms. They are also heavily dependent on TISL to provide pre sales support. The Solution Providers on the other hand look at the relationship as a medium of getting a wider market for their solutions. A study was done to find out the image of TISL vis-a-vis competition as far as the Business Partner program is concerned. The analysis positioned TISLs as having a better operational commitment, but the reputation of the program was not as high as that of DEC or SUN- 5 WIPRO. What needs to be done? TISL should focus more on promotional activities for both the program as well as the products. The Business Partner Relationship Managers should concentrate more on the relationship aspects and the brand teams should get more involved in providing sales - support. The payment terms can by reviewed on a case-by-case basis and leasing could be looked as an alternative. There should be dedicated relationship managers at each regional “. office. Presently TISL is dependent on the BP’s to get business from the non metros. With the present conducive industrial climate, a lot of industries are coming up in the non metro towns. The second part of the project was to study the market potential of Mysore. The existing industrial base and the proximity to Bangalore coupled with the State Governments initiative to woo in foreign investment into the state has made the future of Mysore as a potential computer market very bright. Presently a lot of Multi National - Companies have their® factories in or around Mysore. The infrastructure and facilities provided are very encouraging. The industries in Mysore are computer literate but most of them are presently working on the DOS platform and are looking to migrate on to a multiuser environment. There are also two engineering colleges which procure a lot of hardware round the year. So there is positively a good market for mid-range computers. The computer buyer in Mysore attaches a lot of importance to local presence of the vendor. Another factor is that they would prefer to deal directly with the principal when going in for a 15-20 lac investment. For most of the companies decision making is not done at the site. However, the local management plays the part of a decision influencer. Seeing the potential of the market TISL should enter it through a Business Partner. However before that a lot of promotional activities need to be done to introduce the concept of Business Partnership and to introduce the products. The tie up should be done with a local company which has a good presence and reputation in the industries round Mysore. : Probably a CMAP could be appointed as mostly the selling has to be done at the HQ level. _ Since HCL-HP and Wipro have a well-established sales set up in Mysore, an aggressive strategy should be adopted to get an entry into these accounts. Buying back of existing - ~ Magnum’s could be one such strategy.