Lucent Technologies Business Communications Systems said it plans to develop aggressively the company’s U.S. network of 1,000 authorized dealers, distributors and value-added resellers, aiming to increase them by at least 40 percent this year.
The Lucent BusinessPartner program seeks “to expand intelligently while maintaining a level of exclusivity for our dealers,” said Edison Peres, vice president of distribution, development and management.
“That’s a very important part of our strategy. [The distribution] needs to augment the level of exclusivity you want to maintain. We don’t want to flood the market.”
There are about 5,000 resellers of telecommunications equipment in the United States. Lucent’s approach will be to send development managers into the local territory, do mapping in the metropolitan statistical areas to identify the players, and determine who has coverage and capacity that complements Lucent’s products, Peres explained.
One of the goals is to “identify local resellers who are No. 1 or No. 2 in their marketplace, and where we are minimum No. 1 or No. 2 on their line card.”
Once targeted, Lucent then plans to look at its current distribution in that territory and determine how much more coverage it needs in that marketplace. “We don’t want to add more than what we need. Otherwise, we over-distribute and the price points drop,” said Peres. “It’s a fine balance.”
Authorized resellers may carry all or part of Lucent’s business product line, which includes its enterprise wireless systems, call-center solutions, as well as the Partner, Legend and Definity communications systems and Audix and Octel messaging systems.
