Channel awards

Simon Meredith meets two more awards hopefuls in this penultimate preview of potential winners.

Ingram listens and learns

Listening to what its customers need and focusing on the 'soft' areas of distribution services put Ingram Micro in line for a Channel Award in 2003, according to Andrew Cakebread, marketing manager at the distributor.

"There has been a major focus on the needs of the customer," he said. "We have as good a chance as anyone, given the investments we have made, especially in the softer areas."

Last year Ingram completed a project that looked at the needs of its customers. As a result, while working to improve its services across the business and introducing online ordering and licensing services, and many other initiatives, it has been changing its approach.

"The emphasis has been on recognising and treating customers as people, not just accounts. Our whole communications strategy is based on paying attention to the customer.

"We've put enhanced communications and database systems in place, a major investment. This enabled us to do things with more efficiency," Cakebread said.

The firm has been trying to gain a deeper understanding of reseller customers so it can meet their individual needs and now has more focus on key areas such as SME and retail.

Cakebread believes Ingram's customers have noticed the difference and will reward the company with their votes in all the distribution categories.

"You win based on the quality, the aptitude and access that you give to customers. We have delivered in all of those areas this year," he said.

CRN analysis
As one of the big three distributors in the UK, Ingram has a chance of being nominated in all three of the main awards categories. The company has been focusing strongly on customer needs, while also working hard on its back-room systems.

Partners dance to the Cisco beat
Cisco is hoping to win the Corporate Vendor Partner of the Year award on the basis of its accreditation and training programmes for reseller partners.

According to John Donovan, Cisco's director of unified channels and alliances in the UK and Ireland, such schemes "integrate the technology focus of each Cisco partner specialisation, individual career certification needs, customer satisfaction targets and support capabilities".

There is little doubt that the company's channel programme is effective in giving resellers credibility. "Cisco has one of the strongest brand names in the world. Customers feel comfortable and secure purchasing from a Cisco partner," Donovan said.

Cisco has introduced annual third-party audits of its Silver and Gold partners to ensure that only the highest-quality partners can stay accredited.

Those that do are listed, along with their qualifications, on the Partner Locator web service. The site gets nearly six million hits a year, mostly from customers and Cisco staff looking for good partners.

The company is running regular customer satisfaction surveys and providing resellers with detailed feedback. Partners have access to these tools as well so they can run their own customer surveys.

In addition, Cisco has stepped up its Technology Specialisation accreditation scheme. This identifies partners with particular expertise in key technologies and provides structured training.

"It enables a partner to differentiate itself from its competitors, pursue new markets, and migrate to services-based and solutions-based models," said Donovan.

Cisco regularly revises requirements for these areas, and provides training in a specific technology or solution area that covers pre-sales, basic deployment and post-sales support.

This means partners that become familiar with specific Cisco products can focus on attaining the foundation of skills needed to implement and maintain the solution, therefore keeping their investment down while gaining higher-level skills.

CRN analysis
Although a possible Vendor of the Year, Cisco has put a lot of effort into the SME market in 2003 and believes its best chance of an award is in the Corporate Vendor Partner of the Year category. The company remains the first choice for many corporate organisations and in 2003 has done much to advance the cause of converged networking.

AWARD PREVIEWS
The last of our previews of potential award winners will be published in next week's CRN.

The eight short lists for which readers can vote will be announced on 6 August. Voting will start on 1 September and continue until the end of October.

Over the next few weeks we will be previewing each of the awards and looking at the credentials of each of the companies on the short-lists.