Mission Collaborate for Polycom

66% of millennials are worried that they aren’t perceived as hard-working when they are not in the office and are working flexibly. This is a big concern globally, shared by 62% of all respondents of a Polycom survey. For organizations to keep up with the fast-pace of digital transformation there needs to be a shift in attitude, and a new approach to how people work and collaborate. Here comes Polycom in the big picture. Polycom helps organizations unleash the power of human collaboration.

Underlying this shift in work culture is technology, which is being provided by Polycom in form of video collaboration technology. ‎Head of Channels & Managed Services – India, SAARC & South-East Asia at Polycom Samir Sayed says, “We are committed to deliver high-quality audio and video conferencing solutions empowering human collaboration and sustainability. This is achieved via channel partners.”

At Polycom, the entire business flows through Channel structure. Over the years, the company has nurtured a good set of Channel partners, who have invested in Polycom technology and can sell and support their products and solutions. “Partners are very important for us. All our business is routed to our partner community. For eg, in case of global deal, we initiate our Indian channel to global account managers.” Samir adds.

Polycom in India is running through four distributors namely, Brightstar who contributes maximum business to Polycom; Cadensworth: it’s an arm of Redington; Syntel: it’s a part of Ahmadabad based Arvind telecom group and Inspira: they are the combination of a reseller & a distributor. Apart from this, Polycom also has channel structure in Pakistan where there is a company representative while distribution in Afghanistan market is handled by FVC from Dubai.

In Polycom, partner ecosystem is segmented into various categories which revolve around Go To Market strategy. Samir explains, “The ecosystem comprises of Enterprise segment, commercial segment, government segment and SMBs, whereas partners are divided into two segments; Focused and Unmanaged.”

Samir further explains how this segmentation works. Focused partners are those are the partners that are significant in size. “The focused partners contribute almost 45-48% of business; we have about 20 focused partners.”

Partners enter into focused category when they qualify through certain criteria; further they are differentiated into Platinum, Gold and Silver partners.

Partners can enjoy the categories after going through several parameters. “The segregation is based on business contribution/revenue criteria, certification, specializations (sales and pre-sales) and services specialization (expertise in complex solutions)” says Samir explaining the partner structure.

“Polycom also rewards partners based on performance against given targets and hence with targets achieved they are categorized into metal partners.” He adds. For every level of partners, Polycom has certifications, specialization and investments which are practiced. There is also a rebate and reward program which is being judged on target performance and how they drive specific focused products in the market.

Other set partners are unmanaged partners; these are the partners apart from focused one. Talking about unmanaged partners Samir says, “The rest of the partners are unmanaged or we can say tier 2 partners; some of which are driven by Ankur Goel, Director Sales, Government & Commercial Business, Polycom’s team. Beyond that all partners are managed by our distributors.”

The major work of unmanaged partner is to identify customer bring them for business, fulfill the supply and maintaining it via distributors.

Polycom has a reward cum rebate program for the Distributors, Partners and Sales team of Partners. “We provide rebates to our distributors based on pre-agreed MBOs at the start of year/quarter. These MBOs are such that it helps create growth for both Polycom and our Distributor and are aligned to Polycom’s GTM strategy.” says Samir.

Polycom provides rewards to Sales team of members under its “Get-Set-Win” program for demonstration and end customer sale of identified products.

While, Microsoft is a key partner for Polycom – “We focus on partners who understand the Microsoft language and are able to attach our solutions when they go and sell Microsoft.” Samir informs.

Asking about expansion strategy Samir says, “We see significant traction in North Eastern states and we are looking to expand in these regions as they are underserved markets and there exists tremendous opportunities in these areas; UP – given the new government in this region, we expect that the consumption of technology will improve, hence we have good opportunity; Bihar also has a progressive government and we foresee huge opportunities in this market.”

To achieve the targeted expansion, Polycom is focusing on different strategies: –

Through Microsoft – For more than a decade, Polycom and Microsoft have enjoyed a strategic alliance that has resulted in more than 40 voice, video, and content solutions that seamlessly integrate with Skype for Business/Microsoft Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange—including the broadest available portfolio of voice and video solutions that integrate with Office 365. Since entering their multi-year development, integration, and go-to-market agreement, Polycom have successfully addressed the most pressing challenges in business to deliver a compelling, complete, and totally interoperable end-to-end unified collaboration solution.

• Expansion through Distributors.
  • Vertical expansion– Government sector is a huge opportunity for us – Polycom wants to have their DNA in the government vertical.
  • Geographical expansion-Polycom plans to rapidly expand in tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India.