Synnex Canada resellers with limited service or installation capabilities are now able to offer these services through a third-party agreement with the distributor.
Under the deal, the distributor’s VARs can call upon the technical staff of National Service Centre (NCS) of Greenville, S.C., which provides repair and installation services for printers, point-of-sale and certain wireless technologies.
Although based in the U.S., National has 12 technicians in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and several other cities for service, and more are to be added.
“It gives our resellers the ability to sell service contracts to repair in the field,” explained Mark Tanner, vice-president of Synnex Canada’s EMJ division.
“It also allows them to do (through NCS) site surveys they may not be qualified to do for customers, such as RFID.”
Perhaps most important, VARs can promise 24-hour, onsite service to customers within a 2.5-hour drive from Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.
The agreement covers onsite and depot servicing of Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark and Brother inkjet and laser printers; Intermec, Metrologic, Citizen and Zebra Card point-of-sale printers; onsite POS and RFID surveys as well as help in national rollouts and installations.
“This allows our partners to do what they do best; look for new opportunities and upgrade more customers to these solutions,” said Tanner.
Four hour emphasis
The deal is aimed particularly at satisfying customers who need to be assured their hardware can be serviced in less than four hours, such as POS users, said Tanner.
“This can be added insurance for those customers that are very particular as to what service contracts they require.”
Tanner couldn’t estimate how many Synnex VARs will sign up for the offering.
Each service is available as a SKU from Synnex Canada and EMJ’s catalogue. VARs will be given an NSC number to call for service.
He also said VARs will get “double-digit profit margins” by using NCS services.
National also does video security installations.
The company has already been offering its services to Synnex Corp. dealers in the U.S. for three months.
Their relationship began a year ago when NCS president Joe Pittillo cold-called the distributor looking for business. He didn’t have to call far.
“My office is directly beside their office,” he said.
“I just placed a call there one day, happened to get a vice-president, mentioned what we do and they invited me to give a presentation.”
He hopes VARs will be reassured that while NCS staff go into customers’ premises they won’t be competing.
“We do not sell equipment at all,” he stressed. “We only work through a distributor such as Synnex.”
As for technical staff here, he anticipates hiring another six personnel.