Defining the vertical ecosystem

Intermec's channel partners play a vital role in helping us to continue to grow revenue, improve  profitability, increase market share, improve sales efficiency and expand our business together.

Intermec's vertical market strategy has been a key ingredient in our ongoing success, providing deeper customer focus and helping to differentiate us from our competitors. Market leading products and technologies and a customer-centric approach, all supported by our channel partners are set to deliver the success we all seek. Across EMEA we have defined our core vertical markets as retail, industrial, consumer goods and transport and logistics and established internal vertical sales teams to target them. These work with our vertically-aligned Premier Solutions Partners, specialist Business Solution Partners and technology alliance partners to deliver a compelling package to customers.

Alliance partners

Through Intermec's Strategic Alliance Programme, we are developing dynamic relationships with leading business innovators, like Cisco, IBM, Siebel and SAP, to speed the creation of customer-focused solutions while decreasing customer risk-in summary, making it easier to decide to buy Intermec.

By working closely with each other from the outset, Intermec and our alliance and implementation partners strengthen and quicken development. Customers see seamless development, improved integration, rapid implementation and benefit from firmly established relationships. The knowledge we have each gained through system implementations over many years is brought together and put to work. Solutions are integrated, tested, and proven before they appear on site. And because our alliance and implementation partners work closely with us on a regular basis, solutions are implemented and delivering results in less time, at less cost. Our alliance partners are also vertically
aligned to deliver the optimum technology and systems backbone for each market vertical: Cisco and IBM in retail, SAP and IBM in industrial, SAP and Siebel in consumer goods, IBM for transport and logistics. While the alliances are co-ordinated globally they are leveraged locally by our partners working as part of the whole Intermec vertical ecosystem.

Two-tier distribution

We continue to develop our channel strategy and have announced key pan- European relationships in the two-tier distribution channel with both ScanSource and Avnet. This move will improve access to our product range across Europe. It also allows Intermecs channel teams to spend more time with our Premier Solution Partners (PSPs). The development of vertically aligned plans, working closely with the Intermec sales force, is critical to the continued growth of our revenues and the development of our strategy. We continue to be focused on the development of plans that will grow both Intermecs and our PSPs' revenues and profits. The strategy is focused around understanding customer needs and delivering solutions to the business problems that they experience - with return on investment as a real customerrealisable benefit. The development of the two-tier channel also increases the availability of products and the opportunity for new partners to leverage the industry expertise offered by our distribution channel, ultimately to maximise the opportunities within their customer base. Data capture product purchases have moved from a shop floor led purchase to an IT department spend and this opens up enormous opportunity for partners that exist in the IT space. They need support to develop this opportunity and the value added, two-tier channel we have in  place can supply this expertise.

We continue to deepen the penetration of our target accounts across our core vertical markets. Developing the hottest prospects and delivering further major accounts like, Tesco, Coca-Cola, Carlsberg, Geodis, Geopost and ARLA, to name but a few of our recent successes. At the same time we will look to promote a specific push to increase demand for printers, media and scanners from all markets.

Peter Howes is responsible for the company's EMEA-wide channel strategy, implementation and revenues. He is also responsible for managing Intermec's alliances with Microsoft Navision and IBM and oversees product management for Intermec's OEM and media products. He joined Intermecin1998 as UK Sales Director before becoming Product Distribution Director, EMEA and then Channel Director EMEA. Before joining Intermec he spent nine years rising through the ranks at Olivetti.