Dealing with distributors even when there are manufacturers around

China has become the world’s electronics manufacturing center since the 1990’s. What attracted foreign companies to invest in the country were low labor cost and a huge market potential. Today, China wants to be known as having skilled engineers, a big factor in competing in the electronics industry.

To sustain its edge in the electronics market, China has started to focus on research and design (R&D) aside from enhancing its manufacturing capabilities. At the moment, however, Chinese companies still depend on adopting foreign concepts, technologies and components. Because of this, local manufacturers still rely on the services of distributors and foreign companies in developing total solutions.

WHAT SEPARATES THE GOOD FROM THE BAD

With the increasing local design-in activities and the growing number of Chinese design engineers, distributors need to offer complete solutions and a vast range of products to meet the different market requirements. These product offerings range from “turn-key” solutions to highly differentiated designs. A good distributor should help OEMs in supply chain management, offering updated technical support, and quality control of components.

A company’s success depends highly on the seamless collaboration among its teams based in different parts of the world. Distributors can help shorten the OEM’s time-to-market by responding to their requirements quickly and efficiently on both component/part delivery and technical support.

WORKING CLOSELY WITH CUSTOMERS

Being one of Asia’s leading distributor, Excelpoint’s skilled and dedicated team have been working very closely with the customers since product conceptualization stage, and work through product design, market testing, and other related areas like supply chain management to quicken their time-to-market.

Excelpoint, which began as a Singapore-based distributor of electronic components in 1987, has evolved to become a total solutions provider. It supplies quality components, engineering designs, supply chain services and R&D to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), ODMs (original design manufacturers) and CMs (contract manufacturers) in Asia. In addition, Excelpoint HK has been awarded the ISO9001:2000 and ANSI/ESDS202.20 certifications which symbolize the company’s continual efforts to maintain superior quality services.

OEMs can get technical support from distributors in many ways, such as field, Online and face-to-face support. Excelpoint has 300 employees in China, of which field applications engineers, applications engineers and the R&D team make up 30 percent. All our engineers are well-trained professionals. They are able to provide technical consultation, chip/product recommendations to meet the customers’ needs, and at the same time they can demonstrate the new product, provide the technical support, and solve other underlying problems. For the more complex areas like Bluetooth, DSP, embedded systems, and FPGA, Excelpoint has dedicated applications engineers to answer customer queries.

HEED ADVICE

It is a must for distributors to become experts in a wide range of markets and technologies to better serve customers. Excelpoint has experienced R&D professionals who are well-equipped with hardware and software design skills, as well as product testing capabilities. They are focused on product development and are well-versed in several segments like wireless communications (e.g., Bluetooth), digital TV ( e.g., HD TV) and mobile communication (e.g., mobile phones). This kind of engineering support helps customers to quicken the time to launch their products.

Both component manufacturers and distributors provide technical support. However, a major difference between them is that chip companies will likely endorse their own components or products. Distributors, on the other hand, may suggest components from different companies, which fit best to the customer’s needs.

To help customers gain deeper knowledge, Excelpoint collaborates with chip manufacturers (our suppliers) in conducting research and trainings where experts are invited to explain new technologies. As part of our value-added services, we act as a “bridge” to our suppliers and end-users. They may ask for assistance in any of our 10 offices in China.