Dell Technologies this week extended its Payment Flexibility Program (PFP) in recognition of the fact that the economic outlook for the remainder of the year continues to look murky as the downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic deepens.
Originally, the PFP was intended to provide partners and their customers with incentives to continue purchasing IT equipment through the summer of this year. Now Dell is committing to extending the program through October, with some payments deferred well into 2021.
Channel partners will also be able to engage in a certain degree of financial engineering to maximize margins by acquiring IT products today that don’t require first payments to be made to Dell until next year, says Darren Fedorowicz, vice president of Dell financial services and global channel sales.
“Partners can engage in arbitrage around their cash flow,” says Fedorowicz.
In addition, Dell is allowing payments on servers and storage to be extended for up to two fixed 12-month period over five years.
Dell is also now allowing end customers to increase PowerStore performance and capacity at any time during the life of the contract through any Anytime Upgrades program.
Finally, Dell is also lowering the full purchase price on laptops, desktops, storage and servers to drive additional sales opportunities.
Dell launched an aggressive $9 billion financing initiative last spring that among other things included zero-percent interest rates. As the overall economy appears to be not recovering as fast as many have hoped, Fedorowicz said it’s become clear there is a need to extend PFP into the Fall.
In its most recent quarter, Dell reported essentially flat revenue growth for its first quarter on annual basis and has publicly revealed it is considering spinning off VMware. That latter move could have major implications for channel partners that participate in channel programs spanning VMware software and Dell hardware.
It’s too early to tell whether programs such as PFP will need to be extended even further, especially as more application workloads shift to the cloud. At a time when organizations are husbanding cash, it can be difficult to convince them to prioritize investments in IT. In addition, many organizations are also likely to wait until the next presidential election results are in before making any major IT commitments. Regardless of the outcome, however, channel partners would be well advised to prepare for the worst while continuing to hope for better times ahead.
Be First to Comment