George Coll, CompUSA

George Coll, CompUSA&s vice president of business services and corporate strategy, spoke with Industry Editor Craig Zarley about the company&s efforts to recruit local VARs as service providers for home and small-business customers. Here are excerpts from the interview.

CRN: Why are you expanding CompUSA&s effort to recruit local VARs as service providers?

COLL: We&ve put a lot of energy into talking to our customers in order to understand what we&re doing good today and what area do we need to focus on so that we can improve and raise the bar on service we are already providing. That&s what our Techknowledgist Services program is all about. CompUSA&s Technology Services is being renamed and relaunched as Techknowledgist Services. It&s evolutionary in nature from what we&ve been doing for a long time.

CRN: How many VARs do you plan to recruit?

COLL: I do not have a number on top of mind that we are trying to reach. We are looking for individuals that have demonstrated proficiency and [service] skills with great quality. We are relying on service providers to provide services guaranteed and backed by CompUSA to our customers. Today we have approximately 20,000 in-store and on-site service people. When you ask how many are we going to add, we have comprehensive coverage even where there is not a CompUSA store.

It&s a new delivery model and new strategy to partner with [outside] individuals rather than having only CompUSA team members that provide services. It&s recognizing the needs and demands of our customers that buy from us and need technology support. And also it acknowledges the fact that VARs are customers to CompUSA every day and are providing extraordinary service to their customers on a daily basis. So there&s a real opportunity to partner together to serve each other&s needs.

CRN: What requirements are there to join the program and what skills are you looking for?

COLL: There are certification requirements. Applications go through a certification process to ensure that VARs have certain skill sets and attributes. We are looking for a wide variety of skills, ranging from wired to wireless networks, to [Home Technology Integration certification], to just plain break/fix, backup and storage solutions, and VoIP. On an ongoing basis, we are looking at the technology horizon and making sure we have the skills and the support network to provide customers [with] the very best support network. It&s far easier to work with folks that are customers to you already, that partner with you already and that have a very broad skill set already.

CRN: Do local stores recruit or is it centralized?

COLL: It&s a hybrid. There is central leadership and management and at the same [time] we really encourage [VARs] to become part of the CompUSA family and get to know the people in the stores who are selling these solutions.

CRN: Does CompUSA set the service rates or does the VAR?

COLL: The process would work too slow and be too cumbersome if [we] went to a process of bidding on service and then marking it up. We have done a lot of research to see what customers will pay for these services, and we&ve done a lot of competitive shopping. We get a lot of feedback from our service network of where we might need to tweak [prices]. But in the end, our customers are what set the price by what they are willing to pay.

In some cases, VARs will be paid by the hour and in some it&s a fixed rate. For example, to add a RAID hard drive to a computer, or to install a wireless network in the home, in many cases it&s a fixed price to the customer and a fixed rate to the service provider. And in some cases, depending on the complexity of the service, VARs will work with us on developing a quote.

CRN: When VARs are brought into your accounts to provide service, will you also compensate them for selling additional hardware?

COLL: Here&s what the value proposition is [regarding hardware sales]. We would like them to think of CompUSA as their own warehouse, rather than tying up capital in inventory. They can view the local CompUSA store as their partner and part of their supply chain. We can make their business simpler and more profitable.

If the VAR is on-site and serving a CompUSA customer and sees an opportunity, we would like to believe as our relationship grows that they realize we are providing them an opportunity for obtaining all the installation revenue and upsell on the services side. In a symbiotic relationship, they would work with us in providing them the actual products to sell that solution.

We are very up front with this. They have to respect that they are servicing a CompUSA customer and if we treat them right, they are going to give the best level of service to that customer and then get a chance to be the technologist that is referred for repeat business for that customer. They have an opportunity to gain a customer for life with CompUSA, and that&s where we see some neat opportunities. We trust them with our customer and that by building strong relationships with that service provider, it really pays back dividends for CompUSA over the long haul.