Tech vendors and distributors are hitting the phones to find out the needs of resellers and partners affected by the devastating Queensland floods.
With much of Brisbane’s CBD under water and several Queensland towns completely inundated, vendors and distributors contacted by ARN agreed this disaster had damaged or destroyed countless resellers across the State.
Express Data general manager, Peter Masters, said his company’s first priority was to supply emergency equipment to the rescue and recovery efforts currently underway.
“We’re supplying Cisco communications kits to the State Emergency Services (SES) so they’re able to communicate,” he said. “We’re in discussions with our vendors about getting emergency supplies of equipment ready for what will be a huge operation to put Queensland back together.”
But rescues services aside, Masters said his Brisbane office’s sales teams were on the phone to find out what resellers needed to get back on track.
“Our resellers all need different things,” he said. “You’re varying from vast resellers who are servicing Government infrastructure to the local guys in the small towns trying to service small businesses.
“Credit has been discussed and if that’s required then we may see it on the table but I don’t think we’ll see blanket movements on things like that because the level of impact is going to vary from none to total.”
Synnex Australia CEO, Kee Ong, said his Brisbane team was urgently trying to contact every reseller but many were unreachable. He said the damage to roads and infrastructure meant the best assistance available would be financial, rather than physical.
“A lot of resellers and retailers will need financial support like extended credit lines to get them through the disaster,” he said. “It will be at least be two to seven days before we can contact the resellers and get a plan. Some of the areas are still under water so the resellers themselves may not be able to assess the damage yet.
“We have to go to the vendor with concrete plans so once we assess the situation we’ll ask them to assist.”
According to Lenovo director of consumer and SMB, Chris Kelly, the scale of the disaster was massive. He said while Lenovo had emerged relatively unscathed, its partner community had been hit hard and would be contact by the vendor.
“Brisbane is a major business centre for many companies and several corporate partners of ours had their head offices there,” Lenovo director of consumer and SMB, Chris Kelly, said. “We haven’t really started to get our head around it yet and we’ll need to work directly with our partners that are located up there to support them.
“It could be through revised credit terms, increased discounts across products to help support the relief effort in their region or something as simple as loan or free equipment.”
His advice to resellers was to find out what was damaged, think about what they needed and contact their account managers to get assistance.
“We’re going to be very flexible and take the lead from our partner’s requests,” he said. “The little guys will be the ones most affected and it’s where we’ll need to be the most flexible.
“Where a small business can get involved in the rebuilding of companies and towns it’s an opportunity to for them to get back up and running sooner rather than later,” he added. “That’s where Lenovo can come in and offer the best possible pricing through further discounts or other terms to make it a win-win for customers and partners trying to rebuild.”
