Dell Technologies today launched a series of channel initiatives that collectively serve to reward partners more for selling the company’s broad portfolio of IT products and services.
Announced at Global Partner Summit coinciding with the Dell Technologies World 2018 conference, a Dell Technologies Advantage that provides sales enablement tools and additional incentives for partners for selling products and services across all the entire Dell Technologies portfolio. Each Dell Technologies business unit will continue to operate its own channel, but partners that actively sell solutions spanning multiple Dell Technologies BU will receive additional marketing support and higher rebates. Dell Technologies also committed to launching an IT Transformation campaign through which it will provide marketing content designed to help partners sell solutions spanning multiple classes of Dell Technologies products and services.
Dell Technologies also announced joint Dell and VMware sales plays for 14G servers from Dell EMC, the ability for partners to license VMware directly from Dell EMC, and a reference architecture blueprint dubbed Dell EMC Ready Stack that can be used to deploy VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, Docker or bare-metal solutions. Dell EMC Ready Stack will only be available to channel partners.
Dell Technologies also unveiled a Dell EMC MyRewards Program, an opt-in, points-based reward program for Dell EMC Solution Provider sales representatives and system engineers. This program replaces existing Partner Advantage and Sell & Earn SPIFF programs. This new program will offer bigger and better promotions with up to three times greater bonus payout and simplified, express claiming of rebates on global basis. The Dell EMC Partner Program will also provide additional rebates focused on driving new business, storage refresh and attaching Pro-Support Plus to storage.
The company is also revamping both the Dell demo program, which now allows partners to use earned market development funds (MDF) to purchase any storage, converged infrastructure, hyper-converged infrastructure and data protection solutions at a discount. Additionally, the Proof of Concept (POC) program, allows the company’s best Titanium partners to independently lead POCs at end-user locations with no-cost hardware, software, pro-support, and shipping.
At this point there are only eight solution providers that have achieved Titanium status in the Dell channel program: Swisscom and Itochu today joined Atea, Bechtle, CDW, Computacenter, FusionStorm, Insight, SHI and WWT in the program.
Dell Technologies also announced it is adding five additional solution provider competencies starting with one for Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, which will be shortly followed by competencies covering high-performance computing (HPC), data analytics, business applications and security. The Dell EMC business unit will also expand services deployment competencies program, which Dell Technologies played a critical role in enabling partners participating in that program to increase their average deal size by a factor of two.
Joyce Mullen, president, Global Channel, OEM & IoT Solutions, Dell EMC, told conference attendees that the Dell Technologies channel is now a $43 billion business, which she says makes the equivalent of a Fortune 64 company.
In the last year Dell channel partners registered 400,000 deals and added 54,000 new customers to the Dell Technologies base, says Mullen. On average, Mullen says 60 percent of Dell Technologies partners are growing and that 70 percent of them made more money last year than the prior year. Dell Technologies also signaled that storage sales were rebounding as indicated by a 70 percent increase in storage rebates being awarded primarily in the second half of 2017. Dell is also now adding a 3.5 percent rebates on storage services sales as well.
Mullen pledged to focus on improving the total partner experience. By the end of the year deal registration will be faster and more accurate. Most deals will be registered in under 48 hours, said Mullen. A full 80 percent of price quotes will be delivered in under four hours and the amount of time required to receive a rebate will be cut by 30 percent, she added. Starting today, Dell Technologies is also making available a dashboard through which partners can track all their program earnings.
Channel partners will also receive the same training as the Dell Technologies direct sales force, which she said is committed to working more closely on joint account planning with channel partners than ever.
“The magic happens when we put direct and the channel together,” says Mullen.
Overall, since the merger with EMC sales growth in the channel for Dell Technologies has witnessed double-digit growth quarter over quarter. The challenge now is accelerating that momentum at a time when the overall global economy continues to improve.
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