MERLION goes to the corporate market with Dell products

The second authorization of Dell's business partners in Russia took place on the 20th of October, 2004. 47 Moscow and regional partner companies of MERLION received the status "MERLION's business partner on Dell products".

In relation with the authorization the representatives of the companies Dell and MERLION summarized the results of cooperation for the six months after the first authorization of Dell's business partners (7.04.2004), told about a new department in MERLION's structure for dealing with Dell's equipment - the Department of corporate distribution, outlined the prospects of further cooperation. The meeting was attended by Alexander Choob, General manager of Dell Russia, Christoph Shastan, regional manager of Dell, Vyatcheslav Simonenko, Commercial director of MERLION, Vadim Yarotski, Marketing director of MERLION, Roman Tchekanov, Director of MERLION Department of corporate distribution.

The General manager of Dell Russia Alexander Choob expressed deep satisfaction with the results of cooperation with the leading Russian distributor of IT market - the company MERLION. "The share of Dell products continue its steady growth, especially in notebooks' segment, the share of which has reached 7,2 % (2003 - 1%). We account for these and other achievements by properly chosen strategy of the company's development on the Russian market. Our cooperation with MERLION is being performed within this strategy. Next year we are planning to reach a new level of cooperation and provide more active sales of Dell equipment on the corporate market through the channels of MERLION".

The regional manager of Dell Christoph Shastan informed that according to the results of the second quarter of the current year the increase in company's sales all over the world made up 19%. Speaking about the strategy of promotion of Dell equipment on Russian market Christoph Shastan said the following, "Dell will continue to cooperate with the partners that show high turnovers and increase figures corresponding to Dell's status as the leader on the world market. The company, in its turn, will provide their economic interests".

Marketing director of MERLION Vadim Yarotski told about the steps of the companies' cooperation which started on March 31, 2003, and said that today MERLION's assortment displays all production groups of the producing company. And the company MERLION possesses exclusive right to some kinds of Dell's products, e.g. notebooks Dell Latitude D505, aimed at a corporate user.

The quality structure of sales of Dell products continues to change. The shares of notebooks continue to grow (April 2004 - 69 %, October 2004 - 71 %), PC (April 2004 - 8 %, October 2004 - 11 %), servers (April 2004 - 6 %, October 2004 - 7 %). The share of displays goes down: April 2004 - 17 %, Ocober 2004 - 8 %. The sales of Dell network equipment, storage systems and palm computers made up 1 %. As before, the notebooks remain the quickest growing production group in the structure of sales of Dell equipment. For the last six months the increase of notebooks' sales made up 1026 % in comparison with the same period of 2003. The increase of sales of personal systems since the beginning of this year made up 180 %, servers - 220 %.

For the past six months MERLION initiated a number of marketing initiatives, along with which it conducted a marketing programme for Moscow and regional partners "MERLION's business partner on Dell products". About 400 MERLION partners took part in the action. According to the results of the programme the status "MERLION's business partner on Dell products" was given to 47 companies: 13 Moscow and 34 regional ones.

a href="javascript: ShowPhoto('https://static.merlion.ru/data/events/dellpartner-two2004/photo5.jpg', 600, 450)">An important result of the conducted programme was an increase of the regional sales of Dell products by 25 %. The regional distribution of the new Dell partners of the second level looks as follows: Moscow - 25 %, the Central region - 15 %, the Volga region - 20 %, the Urals and the Southern region each - 10 % and the North-Western region - 15 %.

Despite the traditional Dell's policy in the world, in Russia with support of the company MERLION an active advertising campaign of the Dell products is going on on television and in leading business and computer mass-media. The new advertising campaign is aimed at increasing of sales of the Dell equipment on the corporate market.

Roman Tchekanov, Director of MERLION Department of corporate distribution presented a new department in the company's structure and told about its objectives. According to him, "The organization of a separate department dealing with the project distribution is conditioned by expanding of MERLION business and necessity to conduct a different from the existing policy of cooperation with MERLION partners that work in the field of system integration and/or that take part in tenders acquiring specific equipment with set terms of delivery and non-standard financial conditions. The integrators put forward hard demands to flexibility and regional representation of the services, and also to level of technical support. These and other reasons were objective grounds to organize a separate structure that has principally different approach to working with partners".

The pivotal working principal of the new Department are timely delivery of products and smooth work of the warehouses, the speed of exercising of orders, special financial conditions and qualified technical support of MERLION partners.

The formation of the new structure within MERLION enabled the company to increase the sales of Dell products 4 times in comparison with the same period of the last year and together with the partners win more 50 large tenders.

MERLION's business partners on Dell products at 2005
	;-)