Large organisations are obvious sales targets for IT vendors, but with the cold winds of recession blowing through the corridors of many of these companies, smaller - perhaps more profitable - businesses have come into focus.
This is the view of Douglas Downing, Intel business manager (servers, desktops and networking) at local distributor Rectron.
He says that small to medium-size enterprises - SMEs - are now viewed by resellers as a lucrative and worthwhile target market in themselves.
"For many resellers, the top end of the market has become unattractive. It is plagued by budget freezes, slow decision-making processes, and stagnated thinking from many technology perspectives," he says.
IT distributors and resellers have had to come up with innovative ways of countering this situation.
"Fortunately for local vendors, a significant portion of the South African marketplace is made up of SMEs which provide a fertile field in which to germinate new sales and marketing strategies.
"At Rectron, we are encouraging our reseller partners to view SMEs in a different light offering them new product and solutions with increased frequency," he says.
However, according to Downing, IT vendors should be made aware of some of the pitfalls in their path.
"Many resellers build their businesses on establishing key relationships with corporate buyers. This strategy has to change.
"There is no such thing as a key relationship with a smaller enterprise, as most companies in this sector are well aware of the products and services on offer in the marketplace and shop around accordingly.
"They are also more budget-conscious than their large corporate counterparts and are easily swayed by special deals and negotiated prices and terms," notes Downing.
Nevertheless, in today`s economic climate, selling to SMEs is not so much a choice as it is a necessity.
Downing maintains that technology has become more accessible in terms of cost and SMEs can now afford more - and better - technologies than they`ve ever had before.
In addition, he says the technology curve is becoming "more granular", reflecting a shift away from the large enterprise market into the SME market.
"With this in mind, resellers should formulate specific strategies with which to attack the SME market.
"For instance, smaller enterprises are looking for the same business benefits from IT as their larger counterparts - but their specific requirements are quite diverse. One size does not fit all.
"One solution for vendors would be to focus on a distinct groups of SMEs - companies addressing defined vertical markets, for example. Resellers can then scale their efforts according to the economic conditions prevailing within these market sectors at any given time."
Resellers should be weary of presenting the "big company solution" to SME buyers. Research shows that SMEs are not necessarily able to use all the functionality in a given solution.
Resellers must, therefore, find ways to provide functionality that is relevant to SME`s specific requirements.
"Partnering with other vendors that are focused on the SME market would be a step in the right direction," says Downing.
Other potential pitfalls for IT vendors include SME`s traditional lack of in-house IT skills and resources.
"This translates into more hand-holding and increased emphasis on remote maintenance and other solutions to help keep the SME`s infrastructure up and running.
"The bottom line is that the technology supplied to the SME, whether it is a single server or a bundled solution, must be easy to install, use and support," he adds.
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