TEAMING WITH DISTRIBUTOR PARTNERS

Hitachi Semiconductor America— Distribution plays a major role in its design-win success "The distributors are the ones that are out in the field uncovering opportunities and calling on those accounts," said Scott Lindberg, director of distribution sales at Hitachi Semiconductor America (San Jose, Calif.)

istribution has played a role in Hitachi Semiconductor America’s business strategy since the Japdanese-owned company opened its doors in the U.S. "We’ve been engaged with distribution for more than 15 years in the United States," said Lindberg.

Initially, Hitachi started out with a long roster of distribution partners - more than 20 companies, including local and regional distributors. In the intervening years, the list has evolved to a select three. "Less is certainly more in this case," Lindberg said. "Our channel today represents 20 percent of our business. In the next 12 months it will increase to 35 percent, and to more than 40 percent over the next two years. That’s the kind of growth we see and expect in this channel."

Today, Hitachi works with Avnet Inc., Insight Electronics, and Reptron Electronics. (The company had settled on five distributor partners, but the list shrunk when Avnet acquired Marshall Electronics and Sterling Electronics.) Avnet provides the global support that the semiconductor company is looking for, as well as provides e-business programs necessary for competition in today's marketplace. The company tapped Insight and Reptron to provide technical expertise on a regional basis.

The main role of distribution for Hitachi is in the area of demand creation and the discovery of new opportunities. "We are very much focused on system logic, microprocessors and microcontrollers, so it is very much a technical sell," Lindberg said. "The distributors are the ones that are out in the field uncovering opportunities and calling on those accounts."

Hitachi is working to support its distributors in these efforts with a traditional array of registration and design-win programs. "These efforts allow us to protect the end customer and all the work that is done," Lindberg said.

"The systems and processes that we have put in place over the past few years allow us to protect the integrity of work done on the front end by our channel and our rep organizations. We can track and trace registrations and designs from end customers all the way through to contract manufacturers," Lindberg explained.

In the future, Hitachi will look more closely at opportunities in the e-service arena. "The challenge we all face is the ability to provide information via the Internet for access all the time, anytime," Lindberg said. "Our challenge as an industry is our ability to allow customers to have access to the information they need at any given moment. We continue to work through that challenge and get our systems in place to provide that information to our distributors and finally to our end customer."

Hitachi already has an e-business initiative in place that includes all regions of the world. In the near future, the company plans to work with its distributors in conjunction with standards organizations, such as RosettaNet, to improve the way they do business together electronically.