automatic data capture
point of sale
Taking networking to the next level
IT Reseller spoke with Varlink CEO Mike Pullon about Psionʼs Ingenuity Working and Ingenuity Live online open community resources, and the benefits they offer to Psion and its customer, partner and developer network.
Mike Pullon: Ingenuity Working offers a host of advantages to Varlink as a distributor.
L
ast year Psion launched its Ingenuity Working online open community for customers, partners and developers in order to better
support the significant evolution in its open innovation-based business model. According to Psion,
www.ingenuityworking.com is all about bringing Psion developers, partners and customers closer together in support of three initiatives. Psion describes these as follows:
• To live our values, our highs and our lows in full view to become more trusted than any comparable company or competitor.
• To share and leverage Psion’s significant IP portfolio with a wide range of vendors and component suppliers.
• To accelerate a fuller and uniquely, open dialogue with its global customer & reseller community.
18 IT RESELLER – NOVEMBER 2011
From a distributor’s perspective, actively working within this communications model, Varlink’s Mike Pullon considers that Ingenuity Working is certainly something one gets more out of the more one explores it. “Initially, as a distributor, I thought the main opportunity it provided was to talk directly to the community that we serve,” he said. “So at its very basic level there is the chance for us to post blogs on the website within various sections; whether it's the
community section, the reseller section or the partner section. So at a very basic level, as a distributor talking to partners about promotions, one of the greatest advantages is we can talk directly to our customers. We don't have to send e-mails out that our customers might not read, and we don't have to write letters to them that they might not open.”
Feedback
Pullon added that when users go beyond the surface of Ingenuity Working there is considerably more functionality to benefit from. “For example, there is a discussion area where contributors might be looking for some feedback on something that isn't working quite the way they want it to,” he pointed out, “or they might want a greater insight into something that they only have limited knowledge on.” Pullon explained that people working for Psion will often answer
such queries and enquiries immediately, or considerably quicker than the average time an enquirer can expect an email to be answered. “So I think this quasi-social nature of Ingenuity Working holds a lot of value,” Pullon remarked.
Within Ingenuity Working, there is also a section called ‘The Pub – Off Topic Chat’; which Pullon has found useful from a business networking perspective. “For example, if you have met people at an exhibition you can keep in contact and can see what their interests are and join in if you want to get involved at this level,” he said. Additionally, Pullon believes Ingenuity Working offers a host of additional advantages for Varlink as a distributor, providing technical support to customers in what is called the ‘Knowledge Base’ area. “Here, there is again the opportunity to ask questions directly to the technical people,” he explained. “I know our own technical staff use it and I know our customers’ technical personnel use it too. So whether it's us resolving problems or customers resolving problems this works well.”
Ingenuity Live With regard to the Ingenuity Live solutions piece within Ingenuity Working, Pullon has been looking at some of the software and solutions developers who have been talking about their offerings on the site recently. “There’s a number of software packages that I think look eminently saleable in the UK,” he said, “and there are certainly a number of people I want to talk to about these packages because they have written software that works well on the
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INTERVIEW
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