2007's Support Leaders

The word "support" is pretty vague, when you consider all it encompasses. For the channel, it could mean the ability to get an actual person on the telephone at 3 a.m. when a customer site loses power. Or, it could mean an alert sent out about a download needed to patch a security hole discovered in a software application. Or, support may simply be marketing dollars.

In the 2007 VARBusiness Annual Report Card survey, solution providers evaluate vendor support according to five metrics: sales support, maintenance

support, quality of field management, market support and training. This year, Intel, in the Client or Server Processors product category, earned the highest rating in the first four of those metrics, coming in at least 13 points above average in each. In maintenance support, the company tied with IBM's mainstream business server group. Both vendors earned a score of 80, 14 points above the ARC average.

"A great road map is nothing without a good support system," said Shirley Turner, Intel's director of North American distribution and channels. "Both sides need to make the investment. For vendors, this is a critical part of a relationship with the reseller community. And for VARs, there needs to be an understanding of what's [required] to get the proper level of support. Both sides have to set expectations up front."

With so many ways to evaluate a vendor's support, what matters most to the channel?

According to the results, partners gave the highest weight among the support criteria to maintenance support in 12 of the 15 product categories. Maintenance support also got the highest average score among the support criteria (66), indicating that vendor efforts are roughly aligned with partner needs. The product category where maintenance support is the most important relative to all other support criteria is Display Technologies. Partners in this category rated maintenance support 10 percent higher than the average rating for all criteria. In the Security Software, Business Software/Strategic and Business Software/Management categories, sales support barely edged out maintenance support as the most important support criterion.

The highest average scores in support went to vendors peddling products in the category of Client or Server Processors (69 points), followed by Mainstream Business Servers, Business Software/Management and Workgroup Color Printers, all of which scored 67.

"No. 1, I don't want [a product] to fail; but when it does, I want to know it will be resolved," said Guy Kittelson, president of Plan-IT Computing. He pointed to Intel has having the best warranty-replacement program out there. "You go to the Web site, put in a part number, and get the replacement. It costs a little more, but they stand behind the product. There's a reason others are cheaper." In one example, Kittelson had a computer fail at a customer site. He arrived at 4:30 p.m. on site, determined it was the motherboard, and called Intel. A replacement was there by 9 a.m. the next morning, he said.

But good maintenance support goes beyond product replacement. As customers increasingly demand integrated solutions rather than point purchases, vendors must expand support beyond the individual product. That's another way that Intel sets itself apart.

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