Compaq to balance direct and indirect sales

Compaq's new UK CEO is placing a greater emphasis on his company's direct sales ability than his predecessors - although Compaq claims the channel has nothing to fear.

The company has always expressed its commitment to its resellers.

In an exclusive interview with silicon.com yesterday, the company's new CEO for UK and Ireland, Rene Schuster - who joined Compaq last month from management consultants, KPMG - conceded that direct sales may become a more significant part of the company's offering.

He said: "If my customers wish to do it, we need to be prepared to service that particular way of going to market."

Schuster stressed that his channel partners were very important, and a key part of Compaq's branding.

But when pressed on the matter, Schuster said: "I think everybody in the world is [going direct]."

He said the online build-to-order model had become so successful it could no longer be called "the Dell model" - it was better known as "the new economy".

Joe McNally, Shuster's predecessor at the helm of Compaq UK and Ireland, told silicon.com in an interview last March that there was a distinction between offering a direct order facility, and fulfilling orders directly - pointing out that even Dell sometimes uses partners to complete delivery.

He said: "Most of Dell's corporate business goes through a channel partner, because they cannot add the value that that particular client needs."

He stressed that while customers may be able to make orders through Compaq's site, resellers would always have a role in fulfilling them.

In April 2000, Compaq launched an annual award scheme for partners that embraced online technologies and became more service-oriented, which it described as "part of its commitment to help partners achieve this transition".

Back in February, Compaq's worldwide CEO, Michael Capellas, told a London conference that the direct model would not work in this country without support from resellers.

He said: "We don't have any plans for the acquisition of distribution capacity in the UK. We're gearing up our own capabilities, continuing to work on our own channel partners. There's a different sort of percentage of direct business here [in the UK] and we've got long-standing relationships."

Computacenter, a leading Compaq reseller, was not available to comment on the news.