Dell Technologies organized the Dell Channel Roundtable

Recently Dell Technologies organized a Dell channel roundtable where Mahesh Jayaram Director of Corporate Communication introduced Anil Sethi -- Vice President and General Manager, of Channels India, Dell Technologies, Diego Majdalani, President, of Global Channel, Dell Technologies, Tian Beng Ng, Senior Vice President and General Manager - of Channels, Asia Pacific Japan, Dell Technologies gathered together and discussed various aspects of the business and what lies ahead in the technology sector.

While interacting with DQ Channels, Diego Majdalani -- President, Global Channel, Dell Technologies shared how Dell finished a big cycle post-COVID of growth and expansion, and the business is changing dramatically to new things, more than just more of the same. AI is being mentioned very frequently. Hybrid clouds are showing up all over the place.

He further explained, "3 years ago, we went out there and borrowed whatever computer we could find, because we were in a rush to get connected. Now is the time to refresh those computers, and we all learned a lot. The user learned I want a smaller speaker, I want a monitor, I want a camera which is better than the camera that comes in the frame of the computer. On the other side, the companies also learned that this distributed architecture has a lot of risks on the security side. How one manages those risks, the patches, and the upgrades on the systems, also shows a different reality than before COVID. So, there also is a big challenge happening. When you look at the market overall, even though the big spike of PCs has slowed down, several fronts are coming up, which are pretty amazing in AI, cloud, Edge, and the future of work just to move forward, and of course, the security behind all the things. So, it’s a good moment where we’re heading, and interestingly, in terms of innovation."

Mr. Tian Beng Ng -- Senior Vice President & General Manager - Channels, Asia Pacific Japan, Dell Technologies also stated-

"Globally more than 50% of revenue goes through that channel. In fact, in Asia Pacific Japan, that percentage is even higher, right, because of our countries in the Asia region. Some of them are, in fact, 100% channel. And therefore, our channel mix is a lot higher. One metric that we look at in the channel team is due registration – the number of dues that our partner registers or brings to Dell. That has had good momentum recently. So, again, it’s a good indicator of the business having good momentum in the channel."

Mr. Anil Sethi -- Vice President & General Manager, Channels India, Dell Technologies shared,

"Dell has completed 27 years in the country. It goes on to say how committed the company remains to the customers. having said that, that kind of commitment starts turning on to the results. If I see last year, it was a tough year, last year, and we had 10% year-on-year growth. A year before that, everybody had a big year and we had 35% year-on-year growth on channel business only. It’s almost like 10 years that I have it in this role. And, we have grown with a CAGR of about 24-25% across every single year. Today we are the most promising OEM and trustworthy. That’s the most important thing, our numbers can go here and there in a year, but that’s what we have retained. And our commitment to our customers and partners continues to be there."

On questioning about how does Dell make sure about the training, etc., both to the customer and to the partner? Anil Sethi answered-

"Let's break it into two steps -

• So one is, first he gets onboarded as an authorized partner. Then he does some competency to come onto the Gold, Platinum, and Titanium. Titanium is our top-most grading in our ‘metal partnering’, the way we call it. So, this is how the competency is brought into the training.
• On the customer side, it depends upon what contract we are closing with the customer. So, if it is an implementation, if there is a deployment, then implementation of some resident engineers, some software applications, data transfer to be done, migrations to take place, or there is a lift and shift, so all those services are separate. So, there is no training. If training is required by the customer, there are two ways to do it – some partners can do it or then Dell also comes in. So, we work jointly at the end customer level to see whatever the customer requires to close the transaction or the deal at that time.

As we went ahead with the discussion about the credit policies and profit-sharing module by Dell Technologies under their partner program, Tian Beng Ng explained," The solutions to sell right I think that's quite well-known right in industry, so I think this would be fantastic right. For the partners in terms of you know increasing profitability because obviously as Diego mentioned, while we don't set targets, we do believe that this would need to drive up our business right with the partner community, and again that would lead to better profitability right you know for the partners."

All three of them actively shared their views about Dell's credit policies.

Anil Sethi, added, "There are two types of billings, One we bill it to is our distributors when the partners buy through the distributor and there are some partners whom we bill directly. Those partners also have a choice to buy from distributors and the policy of credit is transparent and depends upon the financials, but they are the best in the industry.  We have a big capital infused into the market, which runs into you know upwards of some millions of dollars. There are about 6 churns in the year that capital takes to generate this revenue and that's what it helps for the partner by the way.  Every partner in the market gets credit, for instance, say distributor but you should know indirectly all the trade comes from Dell, It starts from us, we open the tab, and then everything happens right.  So, different layers work on that."

Furthermore, he adds, "We have a working capital solution, I'm not talking about the number of days of credit here. But the second part is on the profitability, for every profitability there are two components in that. Everything comes under the compute storage network, so if somebody is doing even 50% or more about 60% or 70% of our portfolio they're participating is going to be on a good margin, and then whom is he selling right that's where if he's selling, he's bringing in more services from his side and is going deeper into it with the customer and his needs you know he'll make more money.  So, that is there and that's what we also do.  Unless and until we don't do that, we don't make it."

Diego Majdalani added his inputs, "When you think about profitability, you're going to think about margin, you can think about margin times quantity.  The quantity element is critical here.  When we said we were going to go partner first for storage we mentioned it in a couple of places about the data in the edge, the hybrid cloud, AI. There is pure growth in the data storage capacity, so it's not only the profitability that you might get but also the number of opportunities out there for your partner to capitalize on this,

Moreover, as Anil was saying, in a company like Dell where you have the full portfolio of products, you have a million ways of growing your business, but the most important way is when you are relevant the value to your customers and for the customers they don't buy products, they buy outcomes, they are concerned about the outcome that this technology will provide.  So, Dell with the diversity of products and lines of business we have to help you bring it all together as a partner in front of the customer to add value. The broader you go, the deeper you go, the more you focus on the value and the outcomes for the customers, the better off the margin goes." Diego sums up.

Lastly, this conversation took a turn towards a topic on how the three verticals public sector, BFSI, and the midmarket with maximum businesses are coming out for the partners. Out of these which has the most traction where Dell focusing on.

Anil Sethi replied," I think there is great work that partners are doing on the media and ITES side, also There is good traction that's coming up on the manufacturing side, so these are the next three things that are looking very bright.  ITES are always helping, but everybody – ITES didn't buy much last year, so that was a different story altogether, but that is going to come back so those things would be there are, there are, but manufacturing and media is another big thing, media is a big thing for storage by the way, right.

Additionally, Anil said, "So, the same is manufacturing which is going to be there. There are a lot of things in the ITES coming up because they're getting all this kind of a transformation project for their customers, but there's a big storage need that is arising.  Today, we see with all these ITES big companies that's what is coming up. So, we think also with the new data log, which is going to be coming up, there is going to be a boom on storage."

This interaction leads to the conclusion, where all three bigwigs of Dell Technologies explained about the policies on which the organization works. They shed light on various points that affect the channel partner ecosystem and how the financials work for them. Also, they elaborated on what a partner or a customer can expect from the rapidly changing technology.