The lockdown and COVID-19 pose unprecedented challenges to businesses, governments, and societies around across the country. Organizations are working with various strategies to maintain business flow. Business leaders from the IT industry share their opinions on how they are helping channel community to leverage industry-relevant solutions to face COVID pandemic head-on.
Vikas Bhonsle, CEO at Crayon Software Experts India
“As we all know we are in the middle of an unprecedented global medical crisis that’s redefining the way we are leading our lives.
At Crayon we have taken strong measures to ensure the safety of our employees. We have implemented remote working policy and our teams are staying connected by using collaborative tools to ensure business continuity of our customers as well as partners. Challenging times like this require innovative and next-gen technological solutions that define newer business models; a new normal.
Being a software and cloud solution organization, we at Crayon are extending all help possible to our business networks. We are making representations to the largest software publishers to relook the terms of our contracts with them and help businesses by financial concessions during prolonged lockdown. We are making entire gamut of our services around software and cloud available to our customers at attractive techno commercial value propositions.
As the workforces are being disrupted, we are helping organizations quickly adopt new working models, by connecting employees and providing special access to solutions that maintain productivity and ensure business continuity. We have created an environment in the cloud where customers can host their desktops and continue working as usual. We have stepped up our capacity to address customers’ need to reduce costs by optimizing their infrastructure on premise or on the cloud and come up with better investment planning. On the account of this service our customers are seeing a dramatic shift in their cost.
I strongly believe people, businesses and the government need to work together to overcome this tough medical and economic emergency. Let’s pledge to maintain social distancing and stay safe,” said Vikas Bhonsle,CEO at CrayonSoftware Experts India Private Limited.
Satish Kumar V CEO, EverestIMS Technologies
At EverestIMS we call this the new “Digital Normal”. Any good business relationship is based on trust and mutual give and take. Today the COVID 19 virus is testing the boundaries of these relationships as financial considerations stretch cooperation to its breaking point. The channel community depends upon interaction, information sharing, discussion, demos and a host of interactive elements that form their arsenal. However, this has been halted completely due to the nature of the current pandemic. Realizing their need, IT Companies have rapidly pivoted and focused efforts towards digital solutions that promote business continuity through online/virtual touch-points and experiences.
These span web-sessions, VPN, video conferencing, etc., as the basic lattice. Many have quickly packaged their software into downloadable, trial or subscription versions. This makes it easy for Channels to fulfill a customer request online rather wait for a person or demo to be sent (after the curfew) is over. Many have also nimbly switched to Cloud-based subscriptions making it easier for customers to get on-board without having to wait. On the hardware front many companies have quickly offered certain business essentials on rental. Items like laptops, routers, printers and other essential are easily available on rent, thus ensuring that the workforce is fully equipped to work from distant locations. Essentially IT companies have slowly been creating the “Digital Normal”.
For us at EverestIMS this is a two-pronged system where our product suite allows businesses to maintain a high level of continuity through 1 – ensuring that their own backend infrastructure is up and running, and 2 – that they are able to engage with customers and stakeholders on a continuous basis. These two crucial factors are paramount to keeping the show running and we are confident of supporting the channel community strongly on these fronts, said ” Satish Kumar V CEO, EverestIMS Technologies.
Shibu Paul- Vice President– International Sales at Array Networks
“Enterprises across the world are struggling to follow remote work practices to limit the spread of COVID 19 and to ensure that operations are disrupted to a minimum. VPN security has become paramount with everyone working remotely. The key to success at work from home now lies in prioritizing communication. Therefore we look forward to training and developing our channel eco-system to be the facilitators for this digital transformation. The focal point will be to engage with highly skilled selected partners who can evangelize customers.
Business Intelligence has helped us optimize our work and focus on productive trends. Array’s channel program is devised to select partners and continuously trains them on leading-edge solutions. Recently we offered our full-fledged support towards enabling the corporate workforce to work from home (WFH) amid the coronavirus threats by offering complimentary Virtual Secure Access Gateway (vxAG) and Direct Desktop Business Continuity Planning license for 30 days to all enterprises who securely wished to plan work from home for their employees.
Our mantra is to work with handpicked channel partners, train them and help them create build sustainable and profitable business models. Our strategy is to empower our partners by offering industry-relevant solutions that partners can successfully leverage in the Indian market.” said, Shibu Paul- Vice President– International Sales at Array Networks.
Ritesh Deodar, Country Manager, Milestone System
We are experiencing unprecedented challenges in the face of the COVID-19 virus worldwide. Milestone is closely monitoring the COVID-19 developments around our markets and has taken actions to secure the well-being of our employees, the business interest of our partners, and customers. We are following guidelines from local authorities and those of the World Health Organization and are taking all necessary precautions.
Our additional measures include:
- Remote working: our teams are fully equipped and set up to work remotely. They have been doing this successfully since the local and national lockdown announcements.
- Support: sales and technical support is operating within their normal hours to ensure our partners get the help they need, when they need it.
- Online training: we have upscale our online training capabilities and capacity.
- Community Webinars: While the current global situation makes it difficult for in person meetings, now is the perfect time to invest in oneself and take the time for a ‘virtual coffee’ together with our team and spend 30 minutes finding what is currently going on in the industry.
Enabling New Revenue Opportunities with CareTM
To give our partner community a helping hand in this difficult time, we’ve also launched a new Care Campaign. This includes upgrade offers, extra support, and lucrative offers for Care coverage to extend a helping hand, said, Ritesh Deodar, Country Manager, Milestone System.
Murugesan R – Senior Director, Sales – Private Networks at R&M
“In the present scenario, channel partners have a prominent responsibility in creating and expanding business opportunities across the globe. Digitization is changing the world in a way we never thought possible. We have realized that connectivity is the top priority and that there is no digitization without cables, connectors, distributors, and racks. R&M expects the demand for bandwidth to continue to increase in local data networks.
To be prepared for upcoming traffic, data center professionals must now plan to support increased bandwidth by implementing optical fiber that enables simplified network transformation.
R&M supports the channel ecosystem with quality products for the creation of high-performance infrastructures in these trying times. Conducting Partner programs help us to enrich our channel partners with the knowledge of new products and updates done for the existing products. This helps us to collect feedback from the customers and have a clear understanding of market demands. Considering the current and future scenarios of the Indian market, we design effective partner programs that not only help us to increase our business figures but also accelerate the growth of our channel partners, said, Murugesan R – Senior Director, Sales – Private Networks at R&M.
Prashanth G J, CEO at TechnoBind
COVID-19 pandemic has thrown almost everyone into an unprecedented crisis and most of the industries remain shut. Even before the 21-day lockdown began in India, our company had already begun allowing people to work from home to maintain a safe and secure remote working environment. We have been fully functional working from home, to ensure the full customers’ satisfaction so that they are assured of full support today and in the days to come.
We are in the business of providing cloud computing which we believe is the key to practical business advantages including quick turnaround time and reduced cost. In times like the current pandemic, these solutions are acting as a savior in terms of continuity of work. We, our customers and their customers, all conveniently continue doing their work from remote locations, without hampering the productivity much. Our team has instituted the knowledge and skills to meet market disruption challenges across Data Storage, Data Backup & Recovery or Cyber Protection, with which they are supporting our customers well, said, Prashanth G J, CEO at TechnoBind.
Note: Views expressed by IT business leaders are their own.
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