The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has left the worst impact across the industries and the growth target of almost every brand got affected. The market activities are limited even in the post lockdown scenario so brands are putting huge efforts to capitalize upon every opportunity. Consumer behavior has also changed now which has forced the tech brands to rework on their GTM strategies. Acer has been very aggressive throughout this whole period and came out with interesting market campaigns to have maximum engagement with channel partners as well as customers. In order to know how Acer is working currently and what other market plans they have for the upcoming months, Rajeev Ranjan, Editor & Publisher, Digital Terminal recently interacted with Sudhir Goel, Chief Business Officer at Acer India. Mr. Sudhir shared valuable insights and briefed upon Acer’s product strategy, channel engagement activities and support to customers. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: How has been the last quarter for Acer? What are your plans for the next couple of months for accelerating the company’s growth to end CY 2020 on a high note?
Sudhir Goel: Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Acer has seen year-on-year revenue growth for the last couple of months. This could be possible by the swiftness of our actions to capture the rise in demands due to work-from-home and online learning needs. In these unprecedented times, Acer India’s focus is on ensuring partners and customers have what they need to build ahead. Acer is pursuing growth and long-term sustainability through its dual transformation, which focuses on its existing PC business while diversifying into new businesses. In the core PC business, Acer’s performance is driven by gaming PCs, thin-and-light notebooks and mainstream notebooks with new use cases like work, learn and game from home. We are establishing the bar high and projecting a slew of innovations in its product line. Amidst that, the main focus is to further strengthen our gaming as well as our creator's vertical ConceptD series vertical since both the sectors have been growing rapidly and have become an essential growth driver for us. We will be continuing to launch products that are unique to the market.
Rajeev: How is Acer serving to the different verticals with its wide product lineup? Which major verticals are you focusing on currently?
Sudhir Goel: As a leading innovative tech company, it allows us to bring new technologies in time to market quickly, and we are strong with our worldwide channel-reach throughout 160+ countries. To keep evolving in the PC business, we devote to optimizing the existing products, continuously integrating cloud platforms and services by developing software and combine with hardware. Our vertical focus include education, work and game from home in consumer space and SMBs and BFSIs in the commercial space in the short term. Long term our focus remains committed to our entire segments we focus into including IoT, lifestyle technology, accessories, health and more.
Rajeev: How do you work with your R&D team to develop the consumer (Gamers, Content Creators & Working Professionals) oriented products? What differentiates Acer from its counterparts?
Sudhir Goel: Acer has been very strong in the R&D space and that is the advantage as a brand we have. We have a lot of ground-breaking technology in each of our product lines to help our users make informed buying decisions. Our efforts have always been to expand our base and reach out to as many individuals possible to make technologically advanced and affordable laptops available to people. Acer has stood out from the competition by introducing generation after generation of its advanced thermal cooling solutions to enable its gaming notebooks and desktops to run at peak performance. This is one of the key differentiation with competition as we are able to provide consistent performance longer and keeping the machine cool and quite. It is a vital advantage for gamers and content creators
Rajeev: What new engagement activities are you planning with your channel partners to understand the changing market landscape and work accordingly?
Sudhir Goel: With changing consumer behavior and offering innovative shopping experience during this period, we have introduced the Omni-Channel experience for our customers to provide a seamless path to purchase and serve better across channels. Acer Omni Channel experience is specially designed to cater to the needs of our Acer Exclusive retail partners in the current COVID-19 scenario. It is Acer’s first step towards a longer-term Omni-channel strategy. This special initiative is built to ensure ease of purchase, keep partners and customers safe, and promote business continuity. Along with our ecosystem of partners, we serve up to 20K plus pin codes through our e-store. Through this service, we also have introduced contactless home delivery solutions from partners to our customers. We are also catering to a lot of business customers to get them critical IT infrastructure to keep the business running.
Rajeev: Please brief about your service support model in the current pandemic situation. How are you resolving the grievances of your customers in this challenging time?
Sudhir Goel: Whether it's technology or helping those most in need, Acer is dedicated to working together to fight this pandemic on every front. With the ongoing pandemic causing public restrictions and health concerns, Acer is offering support to its customers especially WFH and LFH community at large. Upholding these values, we had come up with the Acer Care campaign for our consumers whereby we maintained sensitivity towards the situation and spoke to them during the lockdown in ways where we could together look at tackling the situation. We covered various facets that were going to be part of the new normal and how we felt our consumers could cope with various new scenarios such as work hacks, maintaining social distancing, etc. Through Acer Care we extended warranty free of cost, enabled remote diagnostics and safe and hygienic service
We believe in innovation and are continually looking at new and progressive ways that will help our customers transform digitally while providing the right tools and support in their journey.
