Channel awards

This week, Simon Meredith meets two resellers and a vendor tipped for great things at this year's channel awards.

First Stop in leading position

Two key factors give First Stop Computers a good chance of winning the Corporate Reseller of the Year award in 2003: its Totalflex services offerings and its focus on storage consultancy.

Shane Gallagher, managing director of First Stop, said: "We have repackaged and re-marketed all our service offerings and we are selling credits for those services. That's nothing new, but I think that the breadth of services we offer is unique."

First Stop's customers can buy the core services they need, and then use additional credits to address other issues without any need for re-negotiation, budget approval or project kick-off.

The company is also building up its storage and data management consultancy, and Gallagher believes it is ahead of its competitors in the key area of email server management.

CRN analysis
First Stop has managed to make the switch from being product- and roll-out-focused to delivering high-value services. It has a good record of customer retention and those loyal customers might well put the company in contention for the Corporate Reseller award.

Wstore gathers momentum
Founded only four years ago, online reseller WStore already has 50 staff and a turnover of £25m.

It is adding 400 to 500 customers to its database every month and has 10,000 companies on its books. Of these, 5,000 have purchased something from the company in the past month, said Tony Price, WStore's managing director.

The majority of WStore's customers are small businesses and the company is hoping to claim the SME award this year.

"We are always being told how good our customer service is. I think it's the whole proposition we offer: the website, the way we market ourselves to our customers and our people," said Price.

CRN analysis
With about 5,000 active customers, WStore will certainly have a chance of winning the SME award if it makes it onto the short list. Continued growth suggests that the company is getting it right most of the time for most of its customers.

Kingston aims to please partners
Commitment, efficiency, flexibility and communication form the foundations of Kingston Technology's channel programmes.

Ann Keefe, the company's sales director for the UK and Ireland, believes they should combine to put Kingston in the running for this year's Specialist Vendor of the Year award.

"We've introduced programmes to enable our partners to save time and money, and we ran our first channel briefing for direct partners," she said. The event will be run twice a year, and will be extended to indirect partners.

Kingston has also launched a service called KingstonCare for server products. If a product fails in the field Kingston will replace it for free.

Winning a Channel Award would mean a great deal to the firm. "For our partners to give us this prestigious award would be very special," Keefe said.

CRN analysis
Memory producer Kingston may not be the most high-profile vendor in the hunt for a Channel Award, but its commitment to the channel and solid programmes could easily see it being rewarded this year.