D-Link adopts efficiencies

D-Link is adopting efficiencies in the face of the credit crunch. Previously the company’s go-to-market strategy had been product driven, but it is now adopting a stronger marketing stance. Maurice Famularo, Marketing Director for Australia and New Zealand, admits that “we’ve been too disjointed with the company at the moment”. He explained that, while this “disjointedness” has been good in some ways, giving the regions a degree of autonomy and allowing them to make a lot of local decisions very quickly, it can also lead to a waste of resources by doing work in one region that has already been done in another. While Famularo couldn’t comment on whether this drive for efficiency could later lead to job losses, he did explain that the company’s emphasis is on using its existing resources to best effect. “It means we are looking at our global structure, seeing who we can use for various resources, having a more globalised approach, to not only our marketing but also our products and internal systems, such as partner programs,” he stated. Globalised teams have been formed to look at the best processes from the territories to formulate this more globalised approach. One of those teams is the Global Branding Team. Currently there are subtle differences in D-Link branding around the world and the company wants to bring these all under one banner. This will reduce the amount of work that is done by each territory by producing globalised templates and guidelines in terms of logo and advertising regulations. These changes will start to emerge at the beginning of this month, with one implication for resellers being more stringent guidelines on publishing product codes and the like.Famularo also noted that “we’ve all got our own versions of partner programs”, many of which have different names. It is likely then, that these will receive similar treatment to the D-Link branding. It is probable that there will be a basic partner program template across all regions, which can then be adjusted to suit the region.“This year for us, probably even the next year, is really the year of efficiencies and putting things in place,” Famularo summed up.