Your family can be your harshest critics and your most loyal fans – often all at once. For a technology company, partners are your extended family. Those partners include value-added resellers, solution providers, managed service providers, strategic outsourcers, OEM solutions, systems integrators and distribution partners.
Today we rolled out for all of them the new, integrated Dell Partner Program. By preserving and building on the best of Dell and EMC’s legacy channel programs, we’re establishing a new one that addresses the needs of partners today and into the future. Developed in collaboration with partners globally, the program’s primary tenets are to be “Simple. Predictable. Profitable.”
“This has truly been a journey in every sense of the word. Many miles have been travelled, many challenges faced, many exhilarations along the way,” says Dell President of Global Channels John Byrne in his blog post. “Now the focus turns to execution and ensuring each and every one of our partners understand the new program and how they can be successful in it.”
Yes, bringing two families together can present challenges, but I know from my time working with Dell’s channel partners that they are a wonderfully diverse family that will strive to deliver the best solutions for their, and our, customers. So, I reached out to some of them to ask how this new program might change their day-to-day operations.
“The great thing is that it will not change our day-to-day operations. We will continue to focus on adding net new customers and helping our existing customers enable their businesses with great technology knowing that Dell has our back,” said Sonia St. Charles, CEO, Davenport Group.
As part of Dell Technologies, we offer them a collective force of innovative capabilities trusted all over the world to provide technology solutions and services that accelerate the digital transformation that is driving business.
“With the breadth of the Dell portfolio we can address complex customer requirements,” said Bob Murphy, President, Presidio North. “The new Dell Partner Program enables us to provide solutions with more agility while maintaining the predictability that’s so important to our business. Combined with the support and enablement in the program, I think our future is bright.”
There are new program tiers and a special Titanium Black status created to provide more opportunity and enable our partners’ profitability. With one deal registration program and a zero tolerance policy for deal conflicts, it addresses the biggest requests we heard from partners – to make it: simple, predictable and profitable.
“My favorite part of the program is the new 1.25 percent revenue multiple for exclusivity!” Paul R. Clifford, president of Davenport Group told me. “This demonstrates that Dell does value the partners that are truly loyal and it levels the playing field between the partners who are loyal to Dell and the partners that sell multiple manufacturers products.”
That’s the sort of enthusiasm from our partners that Dell President and Chief Commercial Officer Marius Haas was talking about when he told CRN in an exclusive interview:
“They are motivated. They are excited. They are thinking creatively about how do they quickly expand their footprint of the Dell ecosystem and that includes inorganic investments (in mergers and acquisitions) to get to the highest tiers as quickly as possible.”
For many years here on Direct2Dell we’ve talked about how committed we are to our partners that take our products and services to market. Last summer, Haas shared how we remained enthusiastic about the business opportunities the combination of Dell and EMC brought to the family. But talk has to be backed up by actions.
The new program announced today was created with an eye towards being the most profitable channel program in the industry, and proves that we’re ‘all in’ with our partners and invested in their success.
St. Charles assured me that the program has addressed all the concerns of the partner community and shows that our team really listened to their input.
“We have a great relationship with Dell and this new program means that we will continue serving our customers and growing our business in partnership with Dell,” she said. “Knowing that the new partner program will continue to support our growth with a generous rebate program and will level the playing field with the accelerator for exclusivity, we are free to focus on working with customers. This program has addressed all the concerns of the partner community and shows that the Dell team really listened to our input, which continues to demonstrate their commitment to the channel.”
