An employee sells an Apple product to a customer at an Apple store in New York, March 16, 2012. In the Philippines, a local reseller of Apple products and services has acknowledged the growing influence of Apple in local businesses and established a unit geared toward servicing enterprise customers. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton
MANILA, Philippines — A Philippine reseller of Apple products and services is acknowledging the growing influence of Apple within the walls of local businesses by establishing a dedicated business unit geared toward servicing enterprise customers.
Power Mac Center (PMC) announced the creation of its Corporate Business Group (CBG) at one of the showrooms at Greenfield District, a property development in Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong City that is said to be using Apple products in their sales engagements with potential buyers.
Joey Alvarez, marketing manager at PMC, told InterAksyon that the launch of the CBG unit of the company is in recognition of the growing number of Apple users among enterprises in the Philippines.
Traditionally geared toward the creative industries such as advertising and publishing, Apple has recently permeated the enterprise space with their consumer offerings such as iPads and iPhones, which have earned a place on the desks of most business executives around the world.
“We’ve been selling to corporate clients before, but we feel that it’s about time that our solutions be put together and packaged as services for businesses,” Alvarez said.
Under the newly created CBG unit, four main services will be offered by PMC. These are: IT Migration and Integration; iOS and App Mobile Solutions; Corporate Marketing; and Employees Purchase Program and Incentives.
Services offered by the company are tied with the warranty of the products, which are typically dated for one year. Other add-ons that could be added to the service-level agreements include system health check, software updates, resource inspection, and even physical cleaning of the equipment or devices.
Of the four key categories, Alvarez said they have gotten a lot of business for corporate marketing, where they tie up with customers in launching various marketing events and promos for their companies.
He added, however, that they would want to see more of businesses migrating to an Apple environment for their IT systems, since not a lot of those have been going on in the Philippines as of late.
“With the new business group, we are not just selling products. We are gathering all the other components such as support, servicing, training and the like and customize them to cater to our corporate clients,” Alvarez explained.
When corporate customers avail of PMC’s enterprise offerings, the company said they will be present in every step of the process, and would offer email and phone hotline support, product evaluation, service unit allocation, and even preliminary training for users of the systems.
Alvarez said this is but a step in the right direction for PMC, which has been servicing clients as an Authorized Service Provider since 1999. Little has been known, however, about their corporate service offerings, hence the creation of the new business unit.
Founded in 1994 at a small rented space in SM Megamall, PMC has grown along with the popularity of Apple products to become one of the leading resellers in the country, with a 15-branch network spread across the country.
Aside from selling Apple hardware, PMC also engages would-be users in software training, product demonstrations, certification of IT professionals, and provision of systems for educational purposes.
