Motor Age: How do you characterize your relationship with your channel partners?
Altenberger: We describe our relationship with our channel partners as cohesive and cooperative with a genuine win-win interest at heart. A prime example of this is our involvement in category management, where we work with channel partners to develop data driven analysis of their market, identify the needs of their customers, determine the optimal product offering and pricing as well as the recommended strategy and tactics to successfully go to market. As practitioners of category management, Delphi and our channel partners are able to learn from the data and then make changes in their product management strategy, cataloging, pricing, inventory models, purchasing and stocking strategies, and even in research and design practices.By taking this collaborative approach to marketing, in a sense, we become a channel business partner. This approach brings significant benefits for both parties, because at the end of the day this is all about providing what the market needs; therefore, we all become more valuable to the market.
All of this is possible today because of the amount of information that is available and shared. This was not the case in the past. In addition, at Delphi we contribute OE Service and OEM data and expertise to complement the aftermarket Point of Sale (POS) information, resulting in a very robust go-to-market strategy.
Motor Age: How important is full line coverage to your supply partners when compared to factors like price?
Altenberger: Coverage is important, but full line coverage from each supplier is not as important as it used to be. It is important that a warehouse distributor (WD) have full coverage, but it is not important that it come all from one supplier. Channel partners have learned at the distribution and jobber level that you can put together a product line from multiple vendors based on shop needs. A shop doesn't care if one supplier has full line coverage; their focus is more on quality and availability across product lines. At Delphi our role is to help customers get the highest quality part that meets their needs exactly when they need it.
In addition, the technicians are buying from the vehicle application level, which is forcing our channel partners to be much more specific. We help support our channel partners by providing a very clear view of the car parc opportunities at the vehicle level in their markets and identify which Delphi product is on those vehicles. We also reference part failure rates as well as OES sales of the same parts to identify the gaps. This is something a traditional aftermarket supplier could not do.
