Friends or foes?

Channelnomics Europe, CRN's sister title, has asked hundreds of resellers across the region if they feel their US vendor partners are doing enough for them. Sam Trendall reports

About 1,000 years ago Leif Ericsson was the most celebrated of the Norse explorers who led the very first voyages from Europe across the Atlantic.

Thus began a millennium-long process in which invaders, settlers, and other visitors from across the continent of Europe played a major role in shaping what is the modern-day nation of the US.

These days the roles are very much reversed, with the US standing as the globe’s biggest economic, geopolitical and cultural power. It enjoys similar domination of the IT arena, with the majority of the globe’s biggest tech brands based in the US.

While the balance of power may now be tipped towards the west, that does not mean the likes of HP, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, and EMC can afford to be autocratic when it comes to courting the European channel.

Which is why we asked hundreds of VARs across Europe to tell us about their experiences with U.S. manufacturers, and whether they do enough to serve the channel on this side of the Atlantic.

To begin, we put a number of statements to our participants and asked them to rate how much they agreed with them, with five being strongly agree and one being strongly disagree.

The statement “I would like US vendors to focus more on Europe in their strategy and channel operations” garnered the biggest approval rating, scoring an average mark of 3.74.

The idea that “US vendors should give more power to country and regional leaders and local account managers in Europe” also scored fairly highly, with a mean mark of 3.61 out of five. Some manufacturers clearly do better than others when it comes to tailoring their proposition for a European channel audience.

We gave our survey participants a comprehensive list of major US-headquartered vendors, and asked them to pick those that they felt do a good job in serving the channel on this side of the Atlantic.

Emerging on top of the pile was HP, which was picked as a good vendor partner for European VARs by 37.84 per cent of our respondents – more than any other manufacturer.

Our research also asked VARs to select those vendors they believe do a poor job of providing their partners in Europe with appropriate strategy and resources. Oracle emerged as the clear leader – if that is the right word – with 22.9 per cent of survey participants claiming the firm does badly in this regard.

The price is right?

We asked our collective of European channel executives to tell us a little more about what they are looking for in a vendor partner from overseas. We sought their feedback on what really impresses them, what always infuriates them – and whether they are currently getting what they want and need from U.S. vendors.

A complaint raised by several of our participants was the need for local managers to be given more autonomy, and not dictated to by senior executives thousands of miles west. “U.S. structures are fine so long as local management are empowered to use [resources] appropriately in local markets,” said one.

Another pointed out that the European IT market is not a homogeneous mass; different countries and regions have vastly differing levels of maturity, making local decision-making power crucially important. “[Firstly], local language does really matter,” they said. “[Secondly], more power and decisions should be given to local managers.

Different countries are on different IT development levels – programmes should be suitable for such levels.” Pricing was another area picked out as a frequent thorn in the side of European resellers.

And, with the weakening euro sullying the financials of the major U.S. distributors and vendors and leading to price increases, this is a problem that seems likely to get worse before it gets better. One respondent said: “The cost of doing business in EMEA is higher, and vendors often uplift their EMEA pricing but expect partners to work on the same margins as in the US.”

Another criticised some vendors’ habits of calculating European prices by simply sticking the euro sign in front of the dollar price, meaning the channel on the other side of the pond can end up paying more.

“We need more localised marketing material and campaigns, [and also] we need more support for delivery of products in euros,” they said. “Customers [opt to] buy software outside Germany for better prices.”

More than 1,000 years on from the first expedition across the Atlantic, clearly making the journey is proving as difficult as ever for some people.

To read the research in full, visit:

http://www.channelnomics.eu/static/report-us-vendor-research