‘Channel partners, the backbone of Etisalat’s road to market’

Etisalat Nigeria recently held a conference to celebrate its Channel Partners. Oluwatosin Olulanna, the company’s Head of Sales and Distribution, spoke about the Conference and the company’s relationship with the Partners in an interview. JUMOKE AKIYODE reports…

Etisalat recently had a Channel Partner Conference. What is the significance of Channel Partnership in Etisalat’s value chain?

 Our channel partners are essentially the backbone of our road to market and by road to market I mean how our products and services get to our consumers. Our Channel partners ensure that our innovative products and service offerings reach our over 23 million customers.Our channel partners essentially are our mainstay, they are the ones who come into contact with our customers on a daily basis, so if we are saying we are an innovative brand, or all our products and services are innovative or we have innovative thinking, that vision has to translate to our channel partners because it has to flow through in order to ensure that our consumers feel these values.

 How has this Channel Partner initiative supported your vision for the growth of smaller and medium scale enterprises and start-up businesses in Nigeria?

In a lot of ways, on one hand, there are a lot of other initiatives that we do to stimulate and get closer to the SME market – we have the Market Access which is a platform that brings SMEs closer to the bigger brands and ensure that there is synergy and relationships. There is the Easybusiness Millionaires Hunt that provides training for SMEs, motivation and gives them a platform to showcase their products and ideas. But for our channel partners, they partner with us and the health of their business is a big deal for us because as they grow, we grow. From our incentives, our products and services how they buy them, how incentives are structured; profitability and their growth is essential to everything that we do; so it will be a shame for Etisalat to be growing and the small group of channel partners are not growing. Our partners ensure that our products and services get to our customers; so if we are doing well as a business, it is important that they do well as a business as well.

 The retail Channel is one of the most common areas of practice for SMEs in Nigeria, can you share specific initiatives that Etisalat has put in place to boost  the growth of start-up businesses in Nigeria?

Like I said earlier, EasyBusiness Millionaires Hunt is a classic example, it is one of our most visible examples and basically what we do there is that we encourage SMEs, entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas and they go through a process of validation then a panel of experienced people in business who review those ideas or business plans, provide support and training on how best to project or develop those ideas and then the top entrepreneurs are trained at the Enterprise Development Centre of the Pan Atlantic University. There is a N2 million each reward at the end of the day for the top 10 ideas. We also provide support to our partners as part of daily care account management, it is about business development and giving Channel Partners or dealers training on how best to structure their business, how to manage their finances, how to train staffs and basically sometimes it is as simple as having the right kind of organogram, the right kind of structure within your business. These are the things that we do to help these businesses grow.

Are there specific roles your channel partners play in your business?

Our channel partners ensure that our products get to our customers, so the fact that you can buy a recharge card on the road either physically or electronically is because our channel partners have picked up those products from us and ensured that products are available at every level of the chain and also geographically and so areas that we may not reach, our channel partners have been able to bridge that gap. Besides making our products available to customers, they are also the ones who ensure Etisalat’s growth in market share as we have seen in the last seven years. They are the ones who go out there to activate SIMs and convince existing and potentials customers of the values of Etisalat in terms of quality of service and customer focus. They are our eyes and ears on the ground; we have experienced impressive growth records  because the channel partners believe in us and the effort we have made to empower them, and stimulate them to push our products and services and that has tremendous impact on our product, market and subscriber share growth.

 Do you have any industry or business-tailored training or development programs that can help them achieve your goals?

Oh yes! We have been doing a lot over the years in terms of customer’s experience, basic organisation and business development. One thing we have been doing over the last one or two years is training sessions aimed at profitability because a lot of bad habits have been brought in over the last couple of years in terms of trading. There is a certain level of financial discipline that is required for the business to be sustainable, going forward so we are investing a lot in training dealers, engaging our channel partners in the area of profitability and financial discipline. Typically, product knowledge and development training, customers experience, customers engagement trainings are things that are ongoing; but over the next one or two years, we are going to be focusing more on financial discipline and business development essentially.

What are Etisalat’s expectations from the channel partners?

The industry itself is changing on a daily bases, and digital is big, smart phone penetration is increasing so traditional ways of making products available are becoming gradually extinct. Our channel partners need to be forward thinking, they need to start investing in a structure that will make them adapt to the changes of the future; they need to evolve and that is our expectation. They also need to start thinking of the bigger picture like “what happens when smart phones penetration gets to30% of the market?” We are seeing cheaper phones coming into the market, and they are becoming more affordable; so what other value added services can they get into to ensure that they are in business in the next three or four years. We need them to be more forward thinking, and more innovative in that area so as we evolve, they evolve with us and it is not just about making products available, not about having shops or retail outlets but about other systems we can create to add value.

JUMOKE AKIYODE