WOJTEK PIORKO, Director, Sales Middle East and Africa for Vertiv in this chat with our Correspondent, Theresa Igata, explains why they are partnering with Nigeria’s Technology Distributions Limited for a stake in the nation’s power market.

VERTIV AND TD, A  STRONG PARTNERSHIP 

We are empowering our local partners and we’ll work with them to grow the business, especially because in channel business we need experienced partners with wide audience of resellers and that is why we have chosen Technology Distributions Limited; they are our IT channel distributor and the largest in Nigeria and we work with them not only in Nigeria, but in other countries of the region.

The beauty of this cooperation is that they have a wide reach of the market, we have great products  and we communicate very well and understand each other very well.

ARE YOU NEW IN THE NIGERIAN MARKET?

We’ve been in the Nigerian market for the past 20 years, so we’re not completely new, though Vertiv brand is a bit new to the market, but all critical product lines that we offer in the Nigerian market, the UPS, DC power for telecom etc. These are some of the core brands that we’re bringing to the Nigerian market. Now as Vertiv we have completely new opening, new team and new structure that is dedicated for this specific market.

NIGERIA’S  INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS AND PHONE USERS 2020 PROJECTIONS

These projections justify why we should be in the Nigerian market. We decided to redesign our regional structure which used to be North Africa and Central Africa; part of Central Africa was Nigeria and now we’ve created one big region (North West Africa) in which Nigeria is one of the key important countries, which is why our team is designed in such a way that we have a country manager responsible for Nigeria only and our product, service and support team is also based in Nigeria, so we give priority to our business in Nigeria.

GETTING COMPLIANCE OF YOUR CUSTOMER ON GDPR

We picked Nigerian market very specifically and we focused on the market. We like to understand the local environment in which we work, that’s why we appoint our distributors and operators because they understand and have the knowledge on how to operate in this market. We do not necessarily have to directly go to our end users because we need our distributors and partners to work with us.

SETTING UP A REPAIR PLANT/TRAINING OF LOCAL MANPOWER IN NIGERIA

At the moment we have small repair plant dedicated for DC power solutions but we hope that in a short space of time we will expand. We have developed an open market and with the growth of the market you can think of any solution.

We have training facilities here in Nigeria, so we can train our distributors and partners on pre-sales, sales and service and this facility is available in our office in Lagos.

We look very positive to the cooperation. TD is very experienced in IT channel distribution and this looks like a perfect match and makes me feel that this cooperation has every chance for success because we communicate very well. At the beginning of the cooperation we set certain target and we’re achieving them.