It’s been almost five years since Dell launched PartnerDirect, Dell’s global partner program, and four years since its launch in Asia Pacific. In just four short years we have grown our program to over 7,000 partners of which 500 are certified Premier/ Preferred partners from across 37 countries in Asia Pacific and Japan.
Given the recent mention from CRN about being one of the “Best Companies to Partner With”, I thought it would be good to share how things are going in our Asia Pacific region. But first, let me share a little bit about the team members who lead Dell’s channel business in Asia. I want to communicate the philosophy behind their business goals, their beliefs, insights and talk about the key business practices they follow.
The key team members leading the channel business in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region are:
Iqbal Marican, Executive Director, APJ Channel Program Management Office
Iqbal is one of the key founding members of PartnerDirect program in Asia Pacific and Japan region. He is a veteran in the IT industry and brings over 35 years of experience to PartnerDirect program, which he has been growing and shaping for the last 4 years.
Wesley Hsu, Executive Director, Global Commercial Channels
Wesley recently joined the Global Commercial Channel team to lead the sales effort in Asia Pacific. He was born in Texas but has spent a significant amount of time working in Asia Pacific and brings to the team a strong sales background.
Pamela Lim, Director Enterprise Marketing and Certification Programs
Pamela has over 20 years of experience in both Direct and Channels sales. She is also one of the key founding members of the PartnerDirect program in Asia Pacific and Japan region. She is responsible for the Enterprise Marketing Programs for Certified Partner as well as the Training and Certification of Registered Partners. To date we have more than 500 Certified Partners across the APJ region.
Ashwini Bhatnagar, Director Channel Marketing and Programs
Ashwini has over 20 years of experience in Enterprise channel business. He is a founding member of the Dell PartnerDirect in APJ. He shaped several key elements of the program towards sustained profitable growth. He has been instrumental in defining marketing programs that are differentiated, simple and effective in complementing partner capability with Dell brand so as to win together in the solution space.
Sharon Ng, Director, APJ Channel Operations and strategic planning
A 15 years veteran in the IT industry, Sharon now oversees the Channel operational aspects and strategic business planning across APJ ensuring the right business processes , programs and infrastructure as well as Channel partner intelligence are in place to enable Channel teams to drive great partner experience, deliver operational efficiency and ease of doing business for our channel partners.
As stated earlier, this is just an introduction to give readers a peak at what’s coming in the next couple of weeks. For my next blog post, I invited Iqbal Marican, our Head of Channel Operations and Marketing in Asia Pacific, for coffee and to chat about the philosophy behind the partner program. He will share his key business drivers, his views on customer satisfaction and how to keep them engaged.
Following Iqbal, I plan to invite Wesley to discuss some best practices in the field then Ashwini, Pam and Sharon to share some of their personal insights. Also, as Asia has many unique countries, I plan to cover some of the opportunities in the key countries and invite solution leads to provide their perspectives on the technology trends and share case studies.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post and will find the upcoming blog posts to be interesting as well. I invite you to contact me with topics you would like to see covered. I also invite our partners to join us at our LinkedIn PartnerDirect Group and to participate in the various discussions or follow us on twitter @DellChannel.