Goodson Imports shoulders NCR channel push

NCR aims to break its 10-year slide from SMBs, signing distributor Goodson Imports to sell its PC-based POS software in Australia in a new global channel push.

Conway Kosi, Asia-Pacific marketing director for NCR, said the retail hardware, software and services vendor had been known mainly for its enterprise products but believed it could eat a bigger piece of the world's SMB pie.

'In the past, we focused mainly on the big end of town, but over the last 10 years, our market share and prominence in the SMB environment has deteriorated and over the last 12 to 18 months, there has been a reaction to that,' he said.

Kosi said new distributor Goodson Imports would play a crucial role in NCR's attempt to claw back a strong SMB foothold in Australia. There were more than 57,000 individual SMB retailers here that NCR might target, he said.

'We won't do that through a direct sales channel. It's clear to us that in mid-markets around the world, including Australia, the best way is to use an indirect channel via a distributor and reseller model,' he said.

Max Schuddeboom, GM at Goodson Imports, said the distributor had 400 resellers on its books that could be interested in NCR products.

POS retail application sales were tipped to expand across verticals, Schuddeboom said.

Kosi said SMB retailers were struggling with issues such as site automation. NCR claimed to have products that assist, including networkable POS software that was 'parameter-driven' and so might be easily adjusted by users.

'We are beginning to market a PC-based application driven by software parameters, so that resellers or customers can make changes without [replacing] the software,' he said.

NCR's application -- dubbed Neighbourhood POS -- might help retailers keep costs down by limiting the number of POS applications they would have to buy over time, he suggested.

The product would be supported by NCR via service providers, Kosi added.

'Our focus is not to steal some reseller's integration business. If we started to do that, it would be very difficult to get any support from resellers,' he said. 'Our focus is to support them, not to cannibalise their business.'

Kosi said that the new channel drive had the backing of corporate headquarters overseas. Many locally-generated channel strategies often failed to secure a corporate nod and ground to a halt for lack of funding, he claimed.