Readers of IM will have noted the recent news that Rajant Corporation recently announced some significant distribution agreements with Trimble Mining and SCAN RF. While in Sydney attending AIMEX recently, IM Editor Paul Moore caught up with Scott Beer, Chief Operating Officer and Todd Rigby, VP of Business Development from Rajant. Both offered some insight on the recent distribution partnerships and how they expect it to enhance support for their end users.
Rigby told IM: “Rajant’s historic distribution strategy involved signing up a myriad of resellers and then working in partnership with them to deliver network designs, project planning, implementations and post deployment support. As distribution has
expanded around the globe, our plan has been to continue to deliver the same high level of support that customers/resellers have enjoyed in North America. While we have been able to continue to grow, it is apparent at some point this model could not continue to scale without changing the focus of the company.”
He added: “For some time we had been planning improvements to our distribution model. In seeking customer input, we were hearing a consistent message. Customers want local support, and quicker product availability for emergency spares, parts and accessories. They also were vocal in their interest for continued manufacturer involvement in the support equation. Local support is integral to a high level of customer satisfaction because of cultures, customs, and regionally specific business practices as well as language. Another issue we had to consider was its multiple market segments in addition to mining. Any new plan needed to accommodate all of these different channels.”
The solution they came up with was to create regional distributors in different areas of the globe. These distributors would allow Rajant to create synergistic leverage between local resellers and a centralised distributor whose intent isn’t to block other entities from selling Rajant products in a region, but works with multiple resellers to ensure all levels of a specific channel are adequately covered, as well as all other market segment channels the group needs to address. They can also act as a central organisation for regulatory compliance, inventory management, RMA processing and warranty claims.
On August 23, 2013, Trimble and Rajant Corporation announced that Trimble would be selling Rajant’s Kinetic Mesh Networking solution as part of its mining portfolio. This means that Trimble will be Rajant’s exclusive distributor in South America, Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia for mining applications. These responsibilities are considered a starting point and both companies expect the territory will expand to other areas of the globe. Then On September 4, Rajant and SCAN RF Projects
announced that SCAN RF Projects will serve as distributor of Rajant’s Kinetic Mesh wireless networking solutions throughout Africa. SCAN RF is a premier network distributor in Africa and already has a significant reseller organisation. And they have a large staff based in multiple countries. Rigby told IM: “Africa is one of the burgeoning mining economies of the world, however the political instability in many countries makes it a challenge for foreign companies to get established. By partnering with an established and respected company like SCAN RF, it allows Rajant to make available its market leading products to a
growing market in a short period of time.”