Emerson appoints Network Solution Partners

New Delhi: With an objective to expand its presence, Emerson Networks
is aiming at revamping its distribution model and has added another set of
partners to their existing two tier model. The newly formed tier will include
Network Solution Partners (NSP) and the company has already appointed as many as
20 NSPs including Delhi-based Team Computers, Mumbai-based Orient Technologies
and Value Point of Bangaluru.

Emerson will further be adding another 8-10 NSP partners by the end of 2009.
In addition the company will also be doubling their enterprise partner or the
direct partner base to cater to customers across the country. The company
currently has 70 direct partners on board.

Talking about the same, Mandeep Gupta, Country Manager, Emerson Networks
mentioned, "As a policy we have certain products that are sold by our channel
directly. Hence we have under taken several initiatives for the channel. We have
about 70 plus partners in this space and by September 2009 we will increase the
count to around 150 partners. Another major addition that we have done to our
channel business is adding Network Solution Partners to our distribution
structure. This is a large scale initiative and is being carried at the Asia
Pacific level."

For the NSP model, the company will be targeting select large IT solution
providers and system integrator partners. There are two levels to the NSP
program. While level two is for the ones who are new to the business, level one
will focus on the advanced partners who have the requisite knowledge about the
industry. The company will be assigning an account manager for the level one
partners and will also carry out incentives and training programs in addition to
carrying out the joint sales calls for them. Level two will include those
partner who are eyeing the solutions business and hence will be imparting
training accordingly.

"The level two partners will be provided with training but there will not be
much of a push on them from our end and the business will be done as desired by
them," added Gupta. He mentioned that the company will work closely with the
level one partners wherein it will assign someone exclusively only to look after
Emerson product portfolio.

"We have been doing the ground work for this program for the past six months
and it is in the advanced stage of being implemented and hence we are now
looking for more like-minded partners. We have close to 20 plus NSP partners in
the top eight cities and we will be appointing another eight to ten partners as
we do not want to overcrowd this space. Earlier our partners did not have access
to various solutions offered by us. For example precision air conditioning and
data center business was never handled by the partners directly but now we have
opened it up for our partners and we are offering them training to further the
same," pointed Gupta.

In addition to this the company is also looking at expanding in the C and D-
class cities. The company has as many as 29 branches across India and by 2009
end the company is planning to expand the branches further and will have about
35 branches in cities including Ludhiana, Trichy, Nagpur, Durgapur, Kota, Shimla,
Surat and Rajkot.

"All our metro partners have been catering to the upcountry partners. But we
want to be closer to the customer which can happen only if we have local
partners. Today customers want the product. Thus the winner will clearly be the
company that is close to the customer," stated Gupta.