Intel lauds local channel progress

Kamil Hasan has spent just over a year in his current role as channel boss for APAC at Intel. CRN caught up with Hasan to get an idea of the changes he has overseen and find out more about how Australia is performing in an APAC region context.

CRN: What changes have you overseen since you moved into your current role at Intel last year?

Hasan: Lots of changes. If you look at the entire supply change side, the first change we made was around the issue of ‘going downstream’. What we are seeing in most markets is that they are moving into tier one, tier two, tier three and tier four cities. Our challenge was getting our products there as early as possible at the right price and right time. It was about reassessing our distribution market. We spent a year developing a new distribution model which we are calling our tier two distribution model. We rolled that out as a pilot in Q4 and Q1 and this quarter we are taking it into new countries. What you will see from this model is our products flowing more downstream and quickly. This is on the distribution side. On the channel side I think that two or three main things have happened.

The first thing was that we became better listeners. How? Last year we would only talk to around 1,000 channel partners, when we have 9,000 channel partners in APAC today. Of that 9,000 there are people who are only buying limited units per quarter and there are those selling 10,000 units per quarter. We were running partner programs, but direct one-to-one contact was only with the top 1,000 partners. We are probably the only company in the world who is now talking to all 9,000 partners. Not a single partner is left out. What we have done is that we have a field team that goes and talks to the big partners. We now also have a sales centre which is basically like a virtual sales team, which calls up our other partners, talks to them, listens to their problems, gives them solutions and builds a relationship. When you build a relationship you hear a lot. You hear about problems. People come back and say ‘some of your programs are not working for us’. This enables us to go back and change those programs. That is one of the best things we have done. From this we have seen the average purchasing levels of these companies going up. We were averaging 70 units a quarter per channel partner. That has gone up to 88 units in the last quarter. That shows what happens when you engage with partners and answer their questions. Then what we do is hold a survey. We used to ask our top strategy partners and they would give us a rating on how well we are doing. We have now launched a survey for all 9,000 accounts and we do this twice a year. It goes through all 9,000 partners and they give us a rating on everything. This is all part of us going into a listening mode.

Next was looking at our marketing programs. You can’t market every country in APAC with one program. Australia has a very different set of requirements. What we have done is given more control to countries, so each country can decide where they want to put their resources. In the past this direction was coming more from the regional HQ.

CRN: In an Asia-Pacific context, how is Australia performing for Intel?

Hasan: I love them. Who says Australia is a mature market? Last year was a phenomenal year for Australia. Our partners have done a fantastic job and we have seen growth there. Australia has led our transitions. With the Quad Core transition, Australia was number one for two consecutive quarters. Australia sells very high in terms of products, too, whether it is desktop CPUs or motherboards sales.

CRN: What do you think has been driving that growth?

Hasan: That’s what has surprised me. I took over this job last year and I said the mature markets are mature now and you won’t see much growth there. It will be the emerging market that will grow. However, I think there is a shift there. On the desktop side I think the channel partners are evolving into new spaces. The Australian customers are now focusing more on the services and solutions side.

CRN: When you are doing your APAC rounds, have you seen any particular differences or similarities between Intel’s Australian partners and
the rest of your APAC partners?

Hasan: You can’t really compare the two because the markets are so different and the partners have different focus areas. If you really want to compare Australia you have to compare it with Korea. In Australia and Korea you find a lot of similarities, the way they work, the way they focus, with a lot of services and solutions in both of those countries. These partners are providing more sound technical solutions compared with other markets in APAC.

CRN: Do you foresee any major changes to the set-up of Intel’s Australian channel?

Hasan: If something is working I don’t believe in fixing it. There is nothing broken there right now. What we want to do now going forward is get our Australian partners more into the services side.

CRN: What is Intel’s take on the Green IT issue?

Hasan: The direction is very clear from our boss, Paul Otellini. Our products come from sand and he said we need to work towards a sand to sand model. We build from sand and eventually it should become sand again. At a product level we are coming up with energy saving products. We have initiatives in place.