News From Annual Summit of Confed-ITTA
The 2nd Annual Summit of Confed-ITTA concluded in Kodaikanal. The two day event that begin on December 13, 2008, saw the convergence of more than 400 channel partners from 17 IT associations across South—Coimbatore, Erode, Dindigul, Vellore, Trichy, Madurai, Salem, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Tirupur, Kanyakumari, Nilgiris, Puducherry, Chennai (ITTA & Sneham) Cholamandala and Karur. The summit was inaugurated by Raja Govindasamy, Principal, Thiyagaraja Arts College Madurai.
In his inaugural speech Govinadasamy spoke about the strength of channel partners. He also stressed the importance of spending time with families despite a hectic business schedule.President speakIn his presentation to partners, S Karthikeyan, President, Confed-ITTA thanked CAMS, Madurai and Microsoft for their help in forming Confed-ITTA. "But for Microsoft's raids on partners and CAMS action to resist it by convening an all association meeting in Madurai, TANITA (Tamil Nadu IT Association) wouldn't have been born.
Later, during the meeting in Puducherry, hosted by its association ITTA on April 15, 2008, Confed-ITTA was born," Karthikeyan reminisced.He also mentioned the Confed-ITTA mail group that was started by PN Prasad, VP, Confed, which paved the way for excellent communication among the members of Confed-ITTA. He stated that most associations fail because of the lack of communication, and the success of Confed-ITTA was the interactive mail group.
According to Karthikeyan, Summit 2007 was one of the major achievements of Confed-ITTA during 2007. He mentioned that Summit 2007 infused confidence among members that they weren't alone, and created a synergy for growth via mutual co-operation and coordination. He added that the Nagercoil, Tirupur and Cholamandala associations were formed after being inspired by Summit 2007. He mention Prasad's contribution in bring the Bhopal association to Confed and giving it a national status. He recalled the incident involving Lenovo and Acer, due to their tenders with Elcot (Electronic Corporation Of Tamil Nadu) in providing desktops and laptops at a subsidized rate and explained the activities that Confed undertook during those time to the members of Confed gathered at the summit. Karthikeyan informed that Confed-ITTA currently has around 1,000 members from 17 associations including two associations from Madhya Pradesh.
Defining the key areas Confed needs to focus on this year, Karthikeyan mentioned Com-Com Pvt Ltd, providing statewide service and Confed-ITTA branding activities. He said that the formation of Com-Com has been well discussed and debated among the members of Confed and it would be taken forward only if a majority of partners wanted to. He also said that partners need to find out how they can implement the idea of having statewide service centers, where any product that is bought across any of the locations from a Confed member can be serviced by any member of Confed in any location.
Similarly, he stressed the need to take quick decisions on branding Confed-ITTA, where the logo of Confed would be present everywhere, starting from their name boards to the customer invoices, so that a benchmark would be set for members of Confed-ITTA and support would be provided to those customers with the logo of Confed-ITA. Karthikeyan said that Confed will be successful the day it ensures that no partner suffers due to failure in business, due to any reason, and Confed would support genuine partners. "We should ensure that Confed-ITTA members have best cooperation, understanding and no issues are personalized. Confed should also ensure that no genuine partner goes down in business for any reason. Only on that day, can we say that Confed has really won," Karthikeyan averred.
Speaking on the theme of the year 'Expanding Horizons' Prasad explained why partners should look beyond the stereotypical way of doing business. "There are lots of factors like growth, marketshare, share holder value, employee value, attrition and global trends. A partner has to look at all these things and try to impart value in all his activities. Partners need to increase the goodwill of the company and try to include service in their portfolio, which remains neglected in most companies," Prasad claimed.
He told partners to change the way business is done and anticipate more changes. "One has to review the way that their organization is performing and restructure it accordingly. They have to bet on their core competencies and should get exposed to market trends and new products and technologies. Primarily an organization should have a 7-S framework, which includes structure, system, staff, shared goals, style, skills and strategy," he said.
On the areas that the partner should consider expansion, Prasad suggested that servicing large clients, offering SaaS model, open source, training, retail format store, distribution, application software and support, security, surveillance products, E-services and green technologies would be some of the areas that partners can look at. According to him, mergers and expansions was another good way to grow in the industry and partners can look at options like cross selling between other partners. "There should be a proper team building exercise, time management, money management, include factors like USPs while selling and should never accept any business by force," Prasad told partners.
While the main sponsors like HP Procurve and Samsung made their product presentations, Microsoft choose this platform for interacting with the partners, where Vipul Sant, Director—Original Software Initiative, Microsoft India spoke about the legal issues involved in using pirated software's in the companies and selling it. He addressed the issues of partners in selling the original software's of Microsoft. The summit also saw Chennai-based Sneham and Cholamandala association joining Confed-ITTA form.
On the second day of the event, the proceedings started with sponsors Lenovo, Akruthi Software and Cooler Master making their presentations. Followed by the vendor presentations all the associations under Confed's belt were asked to make presentations on their activities.S Prakash, Secretary, Confed-ITTA made a presentation on the ethical business practices followed by members of Salem IT Association. Prakash stressed that all channel partners need to deal with only ethical people in the channel industry. He also noted that tampering with MRP stickers is strictly against the law and asked partners to return materials immediately to the distributors or vendors if they felt any malpractices in MRP stickers.
"No dealer should tamper with or sell materials without MRP stickers and the dealers need to ensure that they sell only on the MRP price and not the dealer price. The dealers also need to understand that no vendor or distributor operates in the market with lesser margins and the channel needs to wake up in this aspect," Prakash stated.Importance of insuranceThere was a couple of other interesting presentations on the insurance front, where K Babu, Coordinator for Insurance Tasks, Confed-ITTA said that Confed has insured its members and their staff for Rs 59 crore and requested the new associations that joined Confed to insure themselves and their staff members. He also requested the other members, who hadn't insured their staff members to do so at the earliest.
Suresh Kumar Soni, CEO, Auro Enterprises, Puducherry, also an insurance agent, made a presentation emphasizing the importance of insurance to each and every individual citing the examples of the four partners who died in various accidents this year.Confed-ITTA also awarded students who won the paper presentation contests conducted by in memory of late Avudayappan, AH Saleem, Ponnarasu and Senthil, who died in various accidents this year.New teamIn the final session of the Summit, the new team of Confed-ITTA under Prasad took charge from the current team. The new team felicitated the previous team's office bearers by awarding them certificates of excellence for their activities in Confed.
After taking charge as the new President of Confed-ITTA, Prasad said that the success of the summit had induced more confidence into the new team. He also said that the new team would try to implement the ideas proposed by the former President—Karthikeyan and his team. The other office bearers—C Balakrishnan, VP; A Muthuswamy, Secretary; Vinod Kumar, Treasurer; Meenakshi Sundaram and P Shanmugam, Joint Secretaries expressed their thanks to members and the confidence in taking the federation forward. The previous team, including Karthikeyan, will remain as advisers of Confed, and they promised their complete support to the new team.Rendering his vote of thanks, Prasad thanked the sponsors of the event—Microsoft, HP, Samsung, Lenovo, Akruthi Software, Gofrugal Technologies, Syntesia and Cooler Master for their support in the event.
He also thanked the members of Confed-ITTA for attending the summit and making it a grand success. Prasad thanked Coimbatore IT association for bringing in sponsors; CAMS Madurai for taking care of the event in Kodaikanal; Erode, Salem associations for working for this summit and the Executive Committee of Confed-ITTA for their continued support.
