Christmas in Feb— Dell-EMC plays Santa for Partners

Post merger, Dell-EMC India or Dell Technologies plans to be bullish on India market. This was claimed by Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer, Dell Inc recently.

As Distribution and channel is the most critical source of revenue, Dell-EMC recently rolled out a fresh channel strategy to accelerate the growth graph for about 4000+ channel partners. This program is common for all parts of the business.

A lot of work has been done to evolve a common program to benefit partners. “A lot of work has been done since September last year and finally the program has been rolled out in February. Earlier, we had two programs; In Asia, Europe, North America and we had a lot of feedback sessions around the world before introducing the partner program.” Said Tian Beng, Senior VP, APJ Channels, Dell EMC.

With the change in structure, the partners would be able to sell products across the enterprise and commercial portfolio, from computer products to networking and storage. “When we designed the program, we took the best of both worlds. And the new program revolves around the three principles, these are--being simple, being predictable and being profitable.” he added.

Watch Tian Beng, Senior VP, APJ Channels, Dell EMC talking about 3 aspects of Channel Program

The program enables accelerated growth in a channel partner’s business. Growth of their business means growth of Dell EMC’s business as well. The new program will give opportunity to partners to sell Dell-EMC portfolio, under one deal registration system. Product categories have been reduced too.

“Previously we had over 20 categories and now we have about 9 categories. We just simplified and we grouped it together and just reduced the number of categories. Now it is easier for the partners as instead of having to achieve targets in so many individual categories, they have to look at lesser number of categories.” Tian Beng explained.

Anil Sethi, Channel Head, Dell-EMC India further explained some more benefits of the program. The new accounts which partners bring in for clients will be protected for 6 months.

Watch Anil Sethi, Channel Head, Dell-EMC talking about New Partner Program.

Another program launched is Line of Business Incumbency. Here, analytics will play the vital role. By looking at the purchase pattern customer’s will be mapped. To make it more predictable, there is a rebate calculator, i.e an online portal where a partner can calculate how much rebates they are going to earn.

The partners will be enjoying the benefit of Market Development Fund and Rebate Calculator. In fact partners can now earn an average of 1.5 to even 8 times more rebates, backend rebates, than the previous program. Globally Dell-EMC has invested $150 million more in incremental rebate and MDF dollars. Which means partners can earn 8 times more in terms of backend rebates. This makes the Program more profitable.

“Partners are super excited about it. According to the Line of Business Incumbency program from now on, any new accounts which partners bring in for clients will be also protected for 6 months. The new program also covers growth rebates and base rebates.” He said.

Almost 95% of erstwhile EMC partners have been working with Dell-EMC. However, they are not doing storage business, but more into computing.

“We have internally in India created an emerging channel team which will work to acquire new partners and bring them to the fold. They will also ensuring that these good partners can qualify for our eligibility criteria so that next year they can come under the metal tiering.” Anil informed.

“In terms of predictiveness; partners are getting lot of time to meet their revenue requirements. Here partners will be given a 6 monthly quota and once in a year they will be audited.” Anil added.

If partners achieve beyond targets, then they will be rewarded with delta revenue, i.e. an extra percentage. Anil shared that there are different percentages for client compute and storage. “Third biggest thing which is the most exciting; is the new  business incentive – A very high percentage will be given after new acquisition of an account”.

There is another package in Dell-EMC bucket – Service Package and Deployment package. A partner could make use of them to earn extra reward.

Finally, it is to be said that partners will benefit greatly under the Dell-EMC product spectrum. The program enables accelerated growth in a channel partner’s business. Growth of their business means growth of Dell EMC’s business as well.