With government's IT procurement strategy firmly focused on developing and nurturing South Africa's smaller resellers, SMB-sized VARs are well positioned to effect a healthy increase in their revenues over the coming year.
That is, of course, provided they are able to fulfil government's requirements - one of which might be the extension of credit terms beyond the industry norm of 30 days.
"Besides being technically capable of handling the job, resellers must be both creditworthy and have sufficient credit secured with their distributors to cover their government deals," explains Alan Hawkins, national sales manager at Tarsus Technologies.
Thankfully it is a relatively easy task to accomplish.
"Financially-sound resellers that have a recent set of financial statements and good relationships with their banking institutions shouldn't struggle to qualify for credit," he says.
"However, because the process of applying for credit takes longer than a couple of hours, resellers wanting to capitalise on these public sector opportunities should be re-evaluating their available credit limits regularly and increasing them where they can; thereby tuning their credit exposure so that it resides with the right suppliers.
"Often resellers will apply for an increase in their credit limit with a distributor without taking a closer look at their credit portfolio," Hawkins says.
"Instead, they should move their credit around to where it makes most sense. That means moving credit to the distributors that they're doing most of their business with," he adds.
As a last resort, Hawkins says resellers who aren't able to get their credit situation rectified can apply to Tarsus for assistance.
He stresses, however, that these arrangements are made on a deal-by-deal basis and cannot be done on short notice.
"This brings me back to the point about resellers being proactive about managing their credit," he says.
"If they work towards securing the necessary credit long before a deal is signed and are unsuccessful, at least there's still time to ask us for help. If they leave it too late, however, they have a strong chance of losing the deal.
"Judging by the size of the deals due to follow from government over the coming year, that would be unfortunate," he concludes.
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With more than 20 years of experience in the ICT industry, Tarsus is the leading value-added distributor in South Africa, specialising in the supply of the world's foremost PC and peripheral hardware brands to the local reseller channel.
Tarsus strives to meet the channel's needs for credit funding, stock availability and efficient logistics, ensuring that resellers are able to deliver the highest quality service to their customers, focus on support and compiling the best overall solutions for their end-user customer base at the lowest possible cost.
The company prides itself on its flexibility, adaptability, knowledge, skills and successful track record combined with an industry-leading ability to manage large rollouts. These are the reasons Tarsus has consistently been rated as the top distributor in the country by international vendors, resellers and the IT media alike.
With its strong commitment to the South African channel, Tarsus is able to not only make the reseller channel more efficient, but more importantly, it plays a vital role in dramatically reducing the costs of doing business in the local ICT market.
Brands represented by the Tarsus stable include industry leaders like Acer, Cisco, HP, IBM, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Logitech, OKI, Samsung, TallyGenicom, Targus and Wyse Technology.
More information about Tarsus is available at http://www.tarsus.co.za.
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