The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional organisation whose participating countries are former Soviet republics – CIS includes 12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIS. This is a VERY LARGE territory covering 10 time zones with a population of about 280 million people.
Colortrac’s business in this very large territory is handled by a regional distributor, Russian Industrial Company in Moscow (see www.colortrac.ru and www.cad.ru). Russian Industrial Company – RIC – have done an excellent job building a network of resellers covering this huge territory and supporting these resellers in every way including helping them build their web-sites. There are still some areas where the presence is weak but they have competent and committed representation of trained resellers in most of their enormous territory.
At the end of May there was a RIC reseller meeting in Moscow where RIC dealers from all over Russia and a few other countries were trained on Colortrac large format scanners. I, Peter Sandberg, trained them in sales & marketing and Graham Vaughan from Colortrac’s Support Department trained them in service and support of the latest Colortrac scanning technology. The event was well attended by about 20 participants attentively listening, learning, taking the scanners apart – and putting them back together again. Even a reporter from a Russian trade magazine grabbed the screw driver and aligned a camera.
In Russia service training of dealers is very important since the territory is so large. It is necessary that there are trained service engineers in many locations in order to quickly resolve whatever issues come up. Graham Vaughan, the technical trainer, was surprised by the enthusiasm and determination among the participants to get hands on experience of the rather complicated task of aligning the six cameras of the Gx+ 42. Most surprising was that the group was so eager that almost all came back on the second day, when Graham was supposed to give in-depth training to the RIC specialists only. It turned out that the whole group got the in-depth training.
Meanwhile I, Peter Sandberg, had business planning meetings with the management and marketing team. It is always a humbling experience to meet RIC. Their highly professional approach to marketing and channel building and their sincere dedication make me wish that one day I will become as qualified at my work. I am very pleased to have RIC as my distributor in this complicated territory. I could not wish for anyone better.
When the office closed the work stopped and the socialising began. Russians are world famous for their hospitality. The relationships with our partners in RIC have developed into warm friendship. After a series of late evenings it is now time to go home and rest after a tiring but successful and pleasant week.
Peter Sandberg in Moscow
