Mid-range Servers

• Back to the future: New opportunities in the mid-range server market
• Addressing the skills shortage
• In search of the Holy Grail: Partnering with software developers
• The more things change, the more they stay the same
• Turning competition into cooperation

The more things change, the more they stay the same

As far as relationships with vendors are concerned, our panel highlighted demand generation as the most critical function.

"What resellers do very well is opportunistic deals. If there's one thing I could ask from a vendor it would be to do a fantastic job building the brand so that when we knock on a door to sell a product the customer knows all about it," Sundata executive director, Kon Kakanis, said.

And although that has always been a central function of channel relationships, Frontline managing director, Steve Murphy, said vendors across the board were still generally doing a poor job.

"We are pretty self-sufficient and load ourselves up to the gunnels with pre-sales and post-sales people but we can't alter the religion of organisations that have gone down a certain path so it is up to the vendors," he said. "Too often, a product campaign comes out but in no time at all they are gone. It needs to be consistent."

Kakanis said part of the problem lay in the channel because the average reseller thinks they are entitled to receive leads from a vendor when, in reality, leads would be fed to those resellers who were working proactively to unearth new business for themselves.

"We have all sat around at some stage on a Friday afternoon and moaned that a vendor hasn't sent us any leads," he said. "The leads you get are directly related to the amount of effort you put into demand generation.

"If you create a buzz around what you are doing then a vendor will gravitate towards you."

Computer Merchants is very open about talking its vendors and distributors into deals, according to director, Norm Jeffries. He said good communication channels were vital.

"There are many facets to distribution from running forklifts in warehouses, through to the finance department, and the marketing and sales guys in the middle," he said "They need to be able to lower my costs and my risk. If they can't do that it fails."

IBM business manager at Avnet, Darryl Tucker, said a central role of distribution was to facilitate communication between vendors and resellers.

"The distributor's job is to navigate within the vendor because if you are not talking to the right person, you are talking to the wall," he said.