Channel Profitability is the focus in Lenovo’s Channel Programs

IT is fast growing as a consumerist market, today each consumer owns four devices, we need to be able to cater to this new market and be the trusted brand end- to end for our customers. Lenovo has a presence in almost all spaces from consumer to enterprise, and the partner ecosystem is greatly benefited with that, says Vasudevan Subramaniam, Managing Director, NewWave Computing

1. Tell us something about NewWave’s business – conception and growth through the years?

NewWave has been in existence for over 17 years now. It is today a Rs. 200 crore organisation, we employ about 150 people, operate in all 4 states of south India, serve over 2000 customers- mid market and enterprise. We also offer product solution and services and have many other partnerships in addition to software and hardware.

2. Since when have you been associated with Lenovo?

The org has been partnering with Lenovo since inception, but it was earlier with IBM. We would carry the portfolio, all the way to the endpoint computing. So we kind of transitioned from IBM to Lenovo. At that point, IBM had a strong share of the market when Lenovo came in, with HP, as far as a multinational portfolio was concerned. There were a lot of other vendors that were in the market as well, local manufacturers, and the assembled marketplace too. The market was fragmented; but the top end of the market had a significant share.

When Lenovo took, over the transition, the brand they inherited, in combination with the business model, which was very successful globally, added to the Indian flavour.
The momentum was very high. The market changed- the HCLs and Wipro were slowly going away, and today they don’t sell at all. So much has changed since then.

So we have been representing Lenovo in the market for a very long time. In the market I am largely identified as a Lenovo business partner – in fact the largest partner in India. We have other brands as well, but Lenovo is one of our oldest partners.

3. Which new product from Lenovo are you selling now and how is the market taking it? What is your role in promoting it?

Today we carry the entire end user computing portfolio of Lenovo. Any device an end user is going to consume, desktop, laptop, phone- it’s more user centric computing world. Today, a single user is going to be using multiple devices. Lenovo has a complete portfolio of products anyone would want to use.

Whatever the client wants to buy, we should be able to supply. W e also partner very strongly on the enterprise side- data center products as well.

With the consumerisation of IT, which is what is happening in enterprises today, I believe Lenovo has a complete portfolio. On the data center side, virtualisation, hyper- conversion, blade investment, workgroup servers, Lenovo has a strong portfolio now. The enterprise business is driving the environment.

We don’t do any marketing activities, but we have an inside sales team that communicates to the customer about the latest products available.

4. Do you see any vertical specific advantages of Lenovo’s products?

Every opportunity is unique, but I am not sure any is vertically designed. But if you take TINY, it is focused on consumers looking at low power, energy efficient devices. A product like that will fit in in any vertical. It’s more specific to user needs, different products for different users- that is the beauty of the product- each is wired to a certain need, for a certain problem. So I won’t call it vertical aligned but more challenges and customer needs aligned.

And you can choose a product that is the right fit. Lenovo has a product for all these challenges.

5. How has Lenovo been a beneficial partner for NewWave?

The key to how we value our benefits is from an overall long term perspective. We want to have strong channel program that is very vital – more consistent and predictable, because it affects the profitability of the business.

Lenovo has been very consistent, which has helped us keep business productive.

Secondly, a consistent supply of innovative products is their strength. It’s a very competitive market if no innovations happen, competition takes over, and this innovative, constantly upgraded supply supports partners to thrive.

Third is in terms of providing us with good support – Lenovo has always been more about predictability and consistency in support- commitment to deliver, supply in time, for service anywhere in the country. Lenovo has a service network of 300 points across the country.

Profitability is a focus in their channel programs, and thus Lenovo has helped us to be successful in this business.
I think Lenovo has done that well.

6. What are NewWave’s focus areas for 2016, and is Lenovo a part of it?

There is a huge transformation happening on the data center side, massive transformation happening- user centric focus- device proliferation is becoming enormous. Earlier we sold a laptop or desktop to customer- today each person owns 4 devices. There is a lot of scale there. It’s a massive opportunity. On the enterprise side there will be a lot of storage consumed, everything will go virtual. So we are planning for that.

The third dimension that will scale tremendously is cloud. So between data center, cloud and storage, there is a lot of action that is happening, and Lenovo has products to offer in every space.

For example, mobility is a big space; a lot of action is happening there, the consumption of mobile devices is going to scale. Business apps will run on mobiles. We see desktop virtualisation becoming a huge deployment. So there is lots happening.

Our company is focused around products, solutions and services. We help customers build infra through the portfolio of services we have. Secondly we provide solutions that will help optimise the IT, NewWave will build IT, optimise it and in the near future, we will help customers leveraging IT for business. So many new areas are emerging. We want to be an org that is capable of building infrastructure, optimising and helping businesses to leverage IT. That’s our focus for 2016