Now that summer is behind us and kids have gone back to school, I wanted to follow up on my blog from July and provide a progress report on where we stand with our channel program. We are approaching the nine month mark since we launched major enhancements to the PartnerDirect channel program at the start of our fiscal year in February. Since then, we have continued making tremendous strides. Global channel revenue grew again at double digits in Q2 with the same percentage of gains across Client, Enterprise Solutions and Software. Distribution revenue is also up significantly and we continued strong growth in deal registrations and the number of Line of Business awards.
We’re also hearing from partners that Dell has made good progress since introducing the PartnerDirect enhancements earlier this year. In CRN’s Annual Report Card survey this month, Dell was ranked #1 by partners in the Converged Infrastructure category, and came in second for Biggest Vendor Gains due to partner satisfaction gains year over year. In another story, CRN reported, “We haven't talked to a partner in the past six months that hasn't said their Dell business isn't up. Some of them say they did more the first five months of the year than they did all of last year.” To learn more, check out “Michael Dell Says Company Is Growing Faster Than HP, Cisco, IBM, Oracle”. You can also read in CRN here about how “Dell has embarked upon more than $18 billion of acquisitions to become more of a full-service provider to convince partners who currently sell in just one or two areas of Dell's portfolio to expand their offerings.”
In the area of distribution, we won an award this month from the Global Technology Distribution Council for our tremendous growth in working with distributors. Frank Vitagliano blogged here about his experiences at the event. Our distribution effort also was the focus of a story by eChannelLine that said, “Dell’s decision to get active in distribution earlier this year is paying off as the company has recorded significant growth in both the number of partners buying through distribution, and revenue done through distribution.”
The “back to school” timeframe must also be on the minds of many of our channel partners, as training engagement has been on the rise across Dell’s end-to-end solutions. We have seen tremendous growth in partners taking Dell training courses, underscoring the burgeoning interest in partnering with us. Completed training courses are up by more than 54 percent and completed competencies are up by more than 115 percent – this is a 13 percent year over year increase in the first half of this year alone. Since integrating software into the PartnerDirect program a year ago, we’ve also experienced a big uptick in software revenue, deal registration and training milestones as we announced at the EMEA Solutions Summit held last week.
In addition, we continue to host a number of events that offer our partners face-to-face training that can help hone their Dell expertise.
- Dell India recently hosted the Elite Circle Program events in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore that attracted almost 200 top performing channel partners, system integrators and VARs.
- The Dell Canada Partner Summit is September 30 through October 2 in Toronto for Canadian channel partners to learn more about the PartnerDirect program with new, specially designed sales training.
- We’ve also seen tremendous interest in the Dell Security Peak Performance conference October 12-15 in Orlando, Florida. We’ve already sold out, and partners are welcome to join the wait list by registering here. Or follow the chatter at #DellChannel on Twitter.
- Finally, partners are invited to join us for Dell’s biggest event of the year, Dell World, November 4-6 in Austin. This premier customer event explores how technology solutions and services provide organizations a better way to accelerate business’ ability to innovate. Learn more and register at www.dellworld.com and follow #DellWorld on Twitter.
The tremendous engagement in partners completing training, attending events and reaching out to the Dell sales teams worldwide underscore the efforts they are making to grow their business with Dell. With almost 300 unique channel partner training courses, competency offerings, and other resources and materials available today, solution selling opportunities abound! To find out more, check out the PartnerDirect page to navigate to a full catalogue of online courses.
The best measure of the progress comes from our partners. Here is what some of them are saying about engagement in the PartnerDirect program and Dell solution offerings:
“Corporate IT Solutions has been a Dell Premier Partner since the program began. Our commitment to Dell as a go to market strategy has been validated over the last few years with the continued investment Dell has made in the channel. Dell continues to deliver very compelling end-to-end solutions that meet the needs of our customers, and this has been amplified by Dell’s strengthened efforts in software. The new channel has enabled our firm to expand our footprint and increase revenue, which makes this a focused business strategy for Corporate IT Solutions.” – Karen Penticost, Director, Vendor Relations, Corporate IT Solutions
"The 13th generation of servers is another example of how Dell is continuing to deliver on their transformative vision for IT. This new generation of server delivers performance and capabilities previously not seen before. When it is coupled with Dell Storage and Networking, the combination creates an environment where workloads automatically move to where they are needed, something every customer is clamoring for and no one but Dell can deliver.” – Sonia St. Charles, Chief Executive Officer – Davenport Group
In closing, thanks to all the partners who continue to invest the time to deepen their knowledge of Dell’s solutions and grow their relationships with us. We also appreciate hearing from you! Please keep sending us your thoughts and suggestions either through your Dell representative or in the comment section below. I also encourage you to engage with me on Twitter via @CookCherylS.
