Hewlett-Packard India's country programmes manager JT Jacob said the company has set up an exclusive-call centre to pass on all enquiries received from the SME segment to the resellers, who will then contact the customers. "Once we pass on an enquiry to a reseller, we give him four working hours to contact the customer to make an offer. Then the reseller gives us a status report on each enquiry passed on by us till the time the order is closed. Meanwhile, we will also contact the customers to make sure that the reseller has approached them," Jacob said.

According to Jacob, the company decided to adopt this approach as many dealers and resellerswere not interested in targeting the small buyers who typically buy one or two personal computers (PCs). "This way we can make sure that the small buyers are not neglected just because they buy in small quantities," he said.

According to an International Data Corporation (India) report, the SME segment accounts for about 50 per cent of the country's total PC and printer sales and is also one of the larger growing segments. Apart from developing a specific-reseller channel to target this market, the company is also tying up with software companies such as Microsoft to deliver specific solutions to these small companies. "We are moving away from the traditional approach of box pushing to deliver total solutions even to small companies," Jacob said.