Certification from all WFH platforms helps Logitech | Varun Nair
Varun Nair, B2B Product Head, Logitech talks about the dynamics of the various b2b solutions.
What are the solutions and services in the Logitech portfolio?
Logitech has become number one in the world for video communications and collaborations. Logitech is very proud to be of very assistant tor thousands of people and bringing them closer together. We are number one in the world in keyboard, mouse, headsets, gaming music as well. We have complete range of video collaboration solution that can help people and teams together so that they can actually better.
What is the proportional contribution from the enterprise and consumer business?
Work from home has become a necessity, till the pandemic started it was a luxury. Due to the social distancing norms and offices being closed everyone had to switch to a work from home scenario overnight, not just for working people but students as well. So that is why we saw a huge demand in laptops, headsets, web-cams and associated work from home products. Logitech is platform agnostic so the customer should have lots of choice they should not be locked in any kind of long term contracts. So because of that Logitech is one of the companies that is completely certified. So we are completely certified by Zoom, Microsoft for entire teams and business platform.
What are the use cases of Logitech’s different b2b solutions?
It’s divided on the basis of the room as small, medium and large. For small room we have a product called rally bar mini, these consists of a 4K camera, wide 120 degree view and high quality audio. This has everything that you will need to start your meetings and it comes pre-loaded with your platform of choice. For medium rooms we have the rally bar its mostly similar to the rally bar mini but it’s much more bigger and its meant for a much bigger space.
What was the traction for the different ranges of the products especially in the WFH scenario and amongst different verticals?
The rally bar, Rally plus is there for the conference rooms. For more of a personal space we have products like meet-up, we also have the conference-cam connect. For people who work from their desks rather a office setup at home we have the largest range of web cams and headsets. These are certified by zoom, Microsoft and other such platforms. So for the senior management persons who prefer an office setup we recommend Logitech Meet-up. The rally series is meant for offices, In India many people are going back to office, and most of the customers we spoke to are adopting a hybrid work culture. Moving forward in every meeting we will have remote participants. 4–5 people will be in office and another 4–5 people will be connecting from their home, so the entire video collaboration is becoming critical to bring people and teams together.
What is the pricing mechanism for different products?
In terms of pricing structure, we have a robust partner programme called Logitech one partner programme. There we have a premier partner and a certified partner, depending on that there are special incentive that they get. In terms of the greenfield deployments we follow a deal registration mechanism. We have a set MRP and depending on the partner tier they get certain level of discount.
What is the partner structure which Logitech follows?
We have an indirect sales model, so we are heavily depended on our distributers and partners to do the fulfilment for us. We are very lucky to have a strong set of partners who have supported us throughout years. Coming to the pandemic it was unprecedented and many partners were facing the crunch. For us partner safety was paramount. We give physical demo of the products that are done by the partners and help close the deal. To help the partners we set up virtual experience zones, across the key cities.
What were some of these digital marketing programs for the partners?
All our partners who are selling technology solutions are very advanced and flexible, they are very tech savvy. So Logitech was very lucky that people were very fast to convert their business model from a high touch sales to a virtual mode of selling.
How did the partners balance between retaining existing customers and acquiring new customers?
We gave priority to helping our existing customers first, but the demand was so huge from the market that we were not being able to differentiate between a new and existing customer. The number one priority was given to health care especially to the families of the frontline workers, hospitals and telemedicine. Second importance was given to education, we did virtual work shops where we talked to teachers on how to effectively teach through zoom. The third priority was government.
What have been the contributions from the different b2b solutions?
Healthcare, education and government were the highest priority but that does not mean the corporate were lagging behind, after the initial six months it was the work from home appliances that the corporate enterprises required. In the second part of the year we saw a slight sift happening people started resuming work offices started opening some events now also are happening, domestic travel trying to normalise. So we have seen a huge demand for our room solutions in the past six months as well. So in terms of revenue the room devices accounts for 70% even in 2020 while 30% is for the web-cams and headsets.
How does Logitech form partnerships and alliances with other hardware OEMs?
Rather than going and competing with other companies we believe in working with everybody and partnering with as many companies as possible. We have official partnership with Intel, Lenovo, Dell and HP. These are huge global partnership for complete bundles. These partners have a special value added offering in the office space and collaboration as a whole is very important for them. So as video collaboration is so critical they have partnered up with Logitech for our cameras.
What sort of rental or pay per use model does Logitech use with its b2b customers?
For smaller deals Logitech does not have an official policy. We have something with our distributor. One of our distributer is Ingram Micro that needs documentation and the customer’s financial needs to be strong. But there is a chance for opex modelling, rather than paying 10 lakhs upfront they can break it up in a 3 year contract.
How does Logitech meet the challenge of fake/counterfeit products and parallel imports?
I am from the enterprise space we have not seen this kind of issues, from the consumer side we are pursuing legal actions. One is a fake product itself, so that is still less and another issue is parallel imports so I will not be able to comment, but we are pursuing legal actions for both.
What are going to be Logitech’s key focus areas in 2021?
From a global perspective we have lot of new products coming this year. We just announced our rally bar mini and rally bar. As we progress in the year lot new products will come close to 8–10 products will be announced. From India perspective we have to major focus areas, one is direct with the customer and other one is with our partner. Our primary verticals will be healthcare, education, government and enterprises.
What would be Logitech’s messages for both partners and customers?
Message throughout this year has been to stay safe that is the primary initiative. Follow all the rules set by the government, third is that video collaboration will never be able to replace a face to face meeting. The future we see is going to be in a hybrid model everything will not be in the office but also in a personalise space. It will be a mix of on premise meetings and virtual meetings.
Originally published at https://itvarnews.techplusmedia.com on May 26, 2021.