'We are leveraging on our global incentive programs and localizing them'

Jim Simon has taken up the charge of creating a good recall for the Quantum
brand in the Indian market. He has already come up with localized versions of
the company’s global incentive programs, to make it more appealing to partners
and customers here. He tells Channels India what other plans he has up his
sleeve to make Quantum a well-recognized brand in the coming fiscal.

Solutions providers feel that Quantum has maintained a very low profile in
the country. What do you have to say about this?

I can only say that this is correct and we are planning to remedy that.
Saying this, I would like to add that we have gone for a channel of quality and
not of quantity. It is easy to have many resellers to sell our brands. But we
would rather have a few partners who are focused or engaged in selling our
products. Here they rely on us for profitability and vice versa. And we feel
this is a more agreeable partnership model.

Going forward, if we come across more partners who are keen on this two-way
partnership then we would be interested in alliances with them. So long as they
are additive to our channel network and don’t clash with the existing partners
in terms of geography. But internal cannibalization and going for a very wide
partner base is not in the interest of the channel or our own.

But partners feel that Quantum is not very focussed on
India as a market?

This is a perception that partners have and we are doing our best to change
it. We are currently talking to them and finding out which areas we need to
improve on. We will make our presence felt in the Indian market and there is
going to be a lot more happening in terms of marketing.

Also, sometime back when Quantum merged all its three
subsidiaries, there was a lot of re-organization required. The competition
floated rumors in the market that we were losing people and were withdrawing
from the market. Even our customers started asking us whether this was true. But
we convinced our customers that we are here to stay. I guess, we will have to
work harder to reinforce this viewpoint.

What kind of an after-sales support network do you have in
the country?

We earlier had a sales office in Bangalore. But we decided to set up a
spares depot as well to make a difference. Incidentally, Quantum is the only
storage company today to have a spares depot in the country.

The biggest hurdle in bringing support to India is customs.
Many times this is what increases the turnaround time as well. Knowing this, we
decided that it is important to have spares depot in the country.

We offer various levels of support to the customer like 9x5
or 24x7 onsite support. For customers who want onsite support, we move the
spares to their site. And for clients where support is not an issue, we despatch
the spares from our depot.

We have also outsourced our post-sales service to a Bangalore
firm, whose immediate response is an extension of our support network. If this
model works out successfully, we will extend this to other cities as well.

Besides marketing programs, how else will you now create
awareness about Quantum in your users’ minds?

We are working on a very aggressive marketing plan that will include
e-marketing and roadshows. We will also have more one-on-one interactions with
partners and end-users to increase awareness about our products. Once the
end-user awareness grows, we can generate a lot of leads for our partners.

Just recently, we moved to localizing some of our online partner programs (see
box). We are leveraging on our global incentive programs and making it more
localized to appeal to the buyers and partners here.

VINITA BHATIA