Business Development

&

Marketing Plan

Prepared by
Hital Muraj
Oct – Jan 2000
© All rights reserved.
ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT

This document is to serve as a building block for the restructure, new vision & business
development of CSP. It shall outline marketing plans & a vision for the future that will ensure
growth experience, year on year into the future. Emphasis shall be placed on setup of ‘point
of presences’ in Uganda, Tanzania & Ethiopia and re-vamping the Nairobi operations. We l,
shall also look at increasing our product offering & services in order to fit into a broad line
distribution company model which is very popular in Europe.

MISSION STATEMENT

Our Vision is to be a number one it distribution

company in the region.

HOW WE ENVISION THE MARKETPLACE & OUR FUTURE THEREOF

Concentrate on where the revenues are coming from. What we know based on our
experiences must not distract us form the focal epicenter of our business, Kenya. More focus
and emphasis needs to be given to the Nairobi office as this is going to be our main point of
business. We should spread our wings to the region so that if one of the country is not doing
well, then we can fall back on revenues from another. This is the typical case we are facing in
Kenya and therefore we need to concentrate on Uganda first followed by Tanzania and then
the neighboring countries.
Software piracy legislation & enforcement thereof - This opens up whole new opportunities.
We shall continue to focus on as it is guaranteed business. We shall also pay great attention
to license renewals, which I have a database that mentions every license that was sold in the
last couple of years.
Increased product & service offerings within Kenya (& then beyond) must become part of our
underlying business strategy. To consummate new agencies & be able to deliver to market
will truly solidify our distribution position in the marketplace.
Being more proactively visible in Uganda, Tanzania & Ethiopia. We shall position ourselves
to capitalise on these markets now, as we see them coming to maturity.

THE TEAM

Myself – top level

Regina – Logistics & Admin
Robert – Symantec Product Manager
Joshua – overall sales assistant
A body – hardware sales
A body – Ug & Tz
Receptionist
2 technicians

Channel Retrenchment & Regional expansion - Our Mission & Goals

Sales, Marketing, Training & Relationship Renewals

Immediate (+ 6 weeks – now & recurring every quarter at a minimum)

1. Establish a base development strategy for Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Eritrea
and the neighboring regions:
My thoughts were to: -
• Have a CSP representative covering the Uganda and Tanzania market.
This person will act as a Regional Sales Manager.
• Have an opening cocktail ceremony with a dealer roundtable session in
each country. This will basically inform the channel who we are and what
we do. The same exercise needs to be replicated in Nairobi for the new
office.
• Have an end of year event – “Thank you for your business” kind of an
event where we can invite all dealers and present an award the dealer
with the highest sales.
• Look into most cost effective way of servicing the region.
• Regular travel to Kampala, Dar-es-salaam & Addis Ababa to follow up &
re-visit on previous trips made & to do some personal face-to-face
bonding in the region by Mujtaba or myself.
• Collate pricing training requirements & structure requisite seminars as
required (both Kenya & non-Kenya).
• Find out what is happening in those markets in terms of proposals out
there, where can we expect future revenues to come in from & generally
how we can help as the Distributor & Microsoft.
• Hold meetings with the channel, individually and as a group to explain the
benefits of being a successful channel partner – BOTTOM LINE IS
MONEY TO BE MADE BY ALL.
• Strengthen the dealer marketing campaign, emphasizing product
availability and support issues. Talk of incentive programs / Spiffs & the
like for feedback & revenue forecasting.
• Strengthen the end-user marketing campaign, emphasizing localization
issues - support, availability & cost.

2. Review & renew channel relationships

• Hold meetings with the channel, individually and as a group to re-assure
them of localised CSP presence.
• Build dealer/reseller relationships through one-on-one site visits and
marketing.
 • Set up order processing systems. Collect credit applications & sign up
entire target market using dealer membership cards? Create this for all
existing dealers as well. Trying to create an ‘Easy to buy from CSP
program’. Look into payment option programs per country. E.g. post
dated cheques, bank guarantees, LC’s, etc. Also create & rollout cash +
early payment discount programs & late payment penalty programs.
Credit management is going to be a MAJOR factor to success.
• Begin dealer marketing campaign, emphasizing product availability and
support issues
• Begin end-user marketing campaign, emphasizing localisation issues -
support, availability & cost.
• Develop goodwill through immediate and visible improvements in
inventory & support management.

3. Re-trenching CSP visibility in the Kenyan channel:

• Spearheaded by myself – I will be responsible for visiting the local channel
partners daily and the regional ones once or twice a month. In the kind of
business we are in, relationships are very important and it is equally
important for us to make our customers important to us. Target 5-10
meetings per week at a minimum.
• Collate pricing training requirements & structure requisite seminars at our
local offices or at a hotel. It is very important for us to hold sessions every
month atleast with the top dealers. We have to be very visible and
proactive in the market.
• Finalize and formalize support relationships with suppliers, including
communications structure. Currently all communications are strictly by
email (pre-requisite to becoming a dealer).
• Have SP/dealer fun-days and informal gatherings.
• Organize and sponsor events such as Golf days, charity funds etc.
4. Sell, Sell & Sell More
• Turn up the market communications, focus on dealer support issues,
particularly localization
• Develop and implement anti-grey marketing campaign through
advertising, seminars and roadshows.
• Monitor and encourage dealer sales performance through tight delivery
and marketing/tech support
• Target user groups / market sectors through seminars and dealer
specialization
• Emphasize, encourage and incentivise sales targets through flexible,
goals-oriented credit management
• Have special offers every month on various product lines e.g sell Office
and get x dollar rebate, highest sales person in a region wins a ticket to
Mombasa etc. These kind of incentives will drive revenues for us.
• Create special offers within various product lines e.g buy an Office Pro
and get a press book for free or buy Win 2K Server and get a NAV free.
 • Liase with the local Microsoft office and do join events with them. Also
liase with other suppliers and see if you can piggy-back off them for
marketing events.
• It is time we started approaching the cooperate market ourselves and
then appoint SPs or dealers to close the business.

Short - Mid Term (Regional emphasis)

1. “Review & Renew” channel relationships
• Guarantee supply through systematic and managed inventory handling –
POS Bar-coding System being looked into
• Ensure channel loyalty through visible and consistent public marketing
• Offer strong and credible technical support, initially free of charge to
resellers
• Develop internal channel communications through dealer associations
and events
• Encourage and reward technical certification, monitor & weed-out non-
performers
• Develop reseller specialization (esp. SP’s) and target marketing
accordingly

2. Implement distributor-specific marketing campaigns:

• Develop advertising campaign focusing on localization, support, business
and technical know-how
• Implement ‘sub-channel’ mailing campaign (following the SP mailing
system)
• Provide sponsorship, participation and support to events (Golf Open,
Racing, Rhino Charge).
• Develop a ‘regional’ profile, i.e. a ‘major (IT) name’ in the East / Central
African region
3. Solidify & structure Information flows
• Price lists delivered by email to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania & Ethiopia on a
regular basis. Also with Microsoft Kenya at all times. Two different pricing
structures for Kenya & non-Kenya as we pay full duties, taxes etc. for our
market. Should start rolling out Microsoft Press, Symantec & OEM as
standard product offerings.
• We should create a CSP web-site to host price lists, product information
and also can place an order on-line.
• Stocks & Special offers will also be rolled out on our web site, but for now
Newsletters & special offers will be rolled out via email.
• All Microsoft headline news will also be pushed through to the channel
customized with the CSP identity.
4. Training the channel on their needs & areas of weakness
• Based on feedback received from the above we shall then strive to focus
channel training needs on defined areas that need work.
 • So far it is evident that pricing issues will be an on-going process as staff
turnover in the channel is quite high.
• Emphasis on profitable areas for the channel to focus on would also be of
importance. Solution Providers need to be told about all our early
experiences so that they can start becoming more focused & niche
market oriented. For example, no one in the region has yet implemented
a major scale SMS site.
• Develop reseller specialization (esp. SP’s) and target marketing &
inquires accordingly. Need to build some of the smaller SP’s to be able to
compete with the likes of Fintech & LANTech.
• Target user groups / market sectors through seminars and dealer
specialization.
• Encourage and reward technical certification. Try to work closer with the
CTEC’s on coming up with special deals for Microsoft dealer channel
training schemes. CSP will give out NFR product to those successful
candidates at our cost (yet to be negotiated).
• Educate the channel on the Anti-Piracy developments that are & will be
taking place. The BSA & how we can all benefit from their presence.
Obviously will be done in close conjunction with the local office.
5. Dealer Awareness of Sales tools that are available from the program
• Become more aggressive with a dedicated marketing team that keeps
pushing information to the channel in terms of price lists, availability,
specials, product information, support services etc.
• Use of the website should be well in place by this time, but shall always
have part of the market with limited access that will have to be reached as
outlined above.
• Pricing training will become a quarterly session or upon request from
dealers.
• Creation of new Spiffs in conjunction with Microsoft should work as it has
in the past. Spiffs will be based on channel feedback & Microsoft
collaboration.
• Emphasize, encourage and incentivise sales targets through flexible,
goals-oriented & credit management, such as,
• Creation sales incentives for smaller vendors. Buy X dollars worth in this
month & get a box of Y for free kind of deal. Need to look at finite costs
before rolling out.
• Am going to propose an early payment discount of 2.5% to those on 30
days credit. Those on COD or 50-50 arrangements will also be given
some form of ‘pay & play incentive’. Freebie games perhaps.
• From discussions with KPMG & through past experiences, the above
incentive is probably the best way to get away from late payment
problems.

Mid to Longer Term

• Concentrate on channel feedback on the above schemes and then re-
deploy what’s working & change what’s not.
Longer Term
1. Achieve “Major Name” status continentally:
• Develop continental strategies addressing direct presence, dealer
marketing and product availability
• Build dealer channel for major product groups and diversify through
cross-selling and reverse channeling
• Implement continent-wide marketing campaigns through press, seminar
and on-site activity

Mission statement:

Our Vision is to be a Major Continental Force in

Software Distribution & Information Technology
Service Delivery

Other Considerations & Options for market sales growth.

• Targeted end user Seminars in conjunction with pro-active resellers and
specific to their market niches. This would be something like Microsoft in
Banking with Fintech, disaster recovery & support with Computer
Revolution, wide area networking with LANTech & Cyber Networks,
Microsoft & the Internet with ISP’s etc.
• Move the same concept to non-traditional channel partners such as audit
firms. The BSA and the potential impact to your customers kind of a
concept. Educating this sort of a market on the asset value of software to
an organization is another concept that I think will work.
• Walk-in Dealer Center:
A long-term plan to ‘retail’’ reseller products to channel partners. This
space will require all the elements of an over-the-counter business (POS.
systems, decor and personnel) and should be closely associated with
CSP, physically and electronically. Have seen this model work for Siltek in
South Africa & we could model our center on the Afcor shop in Addis.
• Expansion of the retailer sales market as & when we see more
companies in our region evolve into true IT retail outlets. E.g. S & S
setting up a retail outlet ASAP.
• Become broad line IT distributors of non-conflicting product lines.
• Marketing:
is expected to grow very rapidly, will require dedicated systems resources
- software, hardware, etc. - as well as personnel and floor space. The
need for Public Relations will also grow in the mid- to long-term.
Other Notes & Options

• Internet Web Site:

• In conjunction with CSP Kenya the distribution unit will set up an Internet
Web-Site, available within throughout the region, that will contain product
information, market communications, technical notes and forms-based
data collection interfaces. Not very practical to dealers at present as
Internet connectivity speeds are regionally prohibitive. All this will change
as satellite technology & licensing become a reality in Kenya, which is all
but underway
• Support on Site:
• CSP Kenya will offer dealers and end-users (as our own service & also
through dealers) on-site technical support, especially in mission-critical
areas such as NT / IIS & SQL set up. The service will be chargeable to
the dealer (or channel as a whole).
• Consulting:
• CSP Kenya can offer consulting and pre-sale feasibility studies to dealers
to ensure that only approved and technically sound set ups are installed,
positively increasing the overall market perception of Channel services.
• THE RETAIL CHANNEL DRIVE – Have a full separate presentation
on that !!