Channel Chief in the Indian IT Industry - Part II

In the last October edition, we got to understand how it is becoming very crucial for B2B to focus on business growth through Channel since it is not possible for organizations to appoint sales /service persons at every industrial cluster. Creating channel partner agreements can be complex because they impact several areas of business. Indeed, channel partnerships have become increasingly useful sales vehicles for products of all types, especially on an international level.

 

A channel-friendly company does not rely on direct sales alone. Channel Policy creates strategic partnerships to reach customers through indirect sales opportunities. Channel partners act as a middleman between a vendor and its end customer, providing sales, implementation, and/or customer support services.

 

One will agree that handling the channel is a completely different ball game. It has been seen that many good sales people can deal with direct customers successfully but fail in dealing with the channel. It is advisable to have a dedicated channel sales team headed by a channel head.

 

Many leading tech companies are realizing that the salespeople pulling new partners into the channel are actually generating much more revenue than the direct sales people. Few corporates even reported that up to 90 percent of their revenue is coming from partners, while as little as 10 percent is from direct sources.

 

The Channel is responsible for increasing revenue and growing market share without the vendor having to hire and train more employees, and invest in office space, tools, and equipment to support those employees.

 

Finally, channel partnerships have the potential to boost the commercial revenue of a company substantially and for a long period of time. You can meet with influencers from the corporate world to discuss your deal and have an agreement ready for them to sign by the end of the day.

 

Let us understand again from the following Tech companies on how their Channel chiefs have formulated their respective competitive and aggressive partner programs.

 

 

Ingram Micro develops its programs to help partners leverage new opportunities

 

SANJAY ACHAWAL
Executive Director and Sales Head, Ingram Micro India

 

“Partner programs drive multiple objectives such as educating channel partners about new solutions and services that they can leverage to grow their business. These programs also act as a catalyst to augment the efforts of the partner sales team in a holistic manner with incentives, enablement as well as implementation and consulting services. It is necessary to set a direction for the partner ecosystem and help define the Go -to-market strategy.

 

Core components of Ingram Micro’s Partner Programs

 

We strive to create programs with benefits that will help our partners accelerate growth and profitability. Our programs equip partners with the resources they need, whether they are looking to build their business or scale. In addition to rebates, we also work with selected partners and create co-marketing programs to help them pitch the right solutions to their customers.

 

As a value-added distributor, we ensure that our partner programs are developed in a holistic manner to help our channel partners leverage new business opportunities. In addition to attractive incentives on deals and POCs, we also provide partners with training and skill development, pre-sales and post-sales support and access to a wide range of sales and marketing materials including emails, vertical-specific customer case studies, whitepapers and more.

 

The other way to support the partner ecosystem is to help them reduce their operational cost, which is achieved by providing them with an E-Commerce Platform, to be able to search products, get pricing and availability, order and track deliveries at a click of a button 24*7, 365 days.”

 

 

Huawei’s partner strategy is to successfully drive partner collaboration

 

 

STANDY NIE
President, Enterprise Business - Huawei India

 

“Digital transformation is the need of the hour for modern enterprises across sectors that are opting for new technologies to improve their products, operations, and relationships. Huawei recognizes that digital transformation and partnerships go hand in hand. A Partner Program benefits all stakeholders in redirecting business goals, principles, and strategy to create a winning ecosystem of support and collaboration intended to provide the best products, services, and solutions to enterprise customers.

 

Huawei adheres to a ‘Being Integrated’ Partner Ecosystem Strategy, aimed at extending its enterprise business to reach new heights, with partner policies that are simple, supportive, and improve partner profitability. For successful implementation of this strategy, Huawei is committed to creating strong channel partnerships throughout the world, including those in India.

 

Core elements of Huawei’s Partner Program

 

Huawei’s partner strategy focuses on building a flexible, collaborative, and mutually beneficial ecosystem central to combining the strengths of Huawei and its partners. The goal of every partnership is to increase profitability of its ecosystem partners, simplify international partner policies and processes, improve partner capabilities, and develop a supportive ecosystem.

 

Huawei’s steadfast, action-oriented strategy for digital expansions engage the market to innovate for a hyper-digital world — with a core belief in ‘ubiquitous connectivity + digital platform + pervasive intelligence’ to deliver digital transformation. Its overall ‘being integrated’ partner strategy is grounded in providing fair, just, transparent, and simple principles to successfully drive channel partner collaboration, with a focus on profitability, simplicity and enablement.

 

 

Microsoft Partner Programs are more than just Rebates and MDFs

 

FARHANA HAQUE
Group Director, DPSS - Microsoft India

 

“We attribute our success to our partners. In Satya’s words, “We fundamentally exist as a company, if not for the partner ecosystem taking what we build, adding value to it and then, most importantly, jointly being as obsessed about how do the outcomes of it help the world get better one business at a time, one community at a time.”

 

Microsoft partners are the last mile to connect with the customers and deliver not just products and solutions but the Microsoft experience on ground. Without any doubt, Microsoft’s success depends on its partners and a Partner program ensures the fabric of the business, mutual benefit and trust.

 

Microsoft’s Channel strategies & Policies

 

Our partners at Device Partner Solutions Sales (DPSS), have a host of programs and services. While we invest directly with our OEMs through programs Jumpstart, Joint Marketing Activities (JMA), etc, there is a range of Partner Programs for our Resellers, System Integrators through our Distributors, Ingram Micro and Redington. We believe that Partner Programs are much more than just Rebates and Market development funds, so our offering includes Evangelism, Demand Generation, Digital First trainings, Customer Promotions, and various tools & resources.

 

We offer customized programs specific to the customer segment, with a Go To Market (GTM) approach, like for our resellers focused on the Education market, our Distributors have launched the Partnerwins.in portal. Similarly, there are programs on Windows 11 Pro modern devices to enable refresh amongst SMBs & Enterprise customers in the country. Our Distributors, Ingram Micro & Redington regularly inform our resellers and system integrators of these initiatives. We embrace the leadership principles of creating clarity, generating energy and delivering success to bring out the best and inspire our partners to do their best.”

 

 

HPE programs allow partners to capitalize on opportunities and innovation

 

AMER WARSI
Channel, SMB & Ecosystem Leader HPE India

 

“Partner programs are all about joint successes. The partner’s success is our success, we are an extension of our partner’s sales force. We are enabling our partners to embrace our vision of moving completely to an as-a-service model while they continue their digital transformation journey through our exclusive benefits such as enablement tools, learning resources and incentives from the HPE Partner Ready Program. Nearly 70 percent of HPE’s annual sales are transacted through HPE’s channel ecosystem, which is more than 80,000 partners strong.

 

Key components of HPE’s channel strategies

 

To help partners grow their business, we have the HPE Market Development Fund (MDF) Program which helps boost their marketing and sales initiatives with discretionary investments from HPE. We make these funds available to select HPE partners for sales enablement and marketing activities that drive demand and pipeline for HPE products, solutions, and services.

 

The HPE Partner Ready Program allows partners to capitalize on opportunities and innovation. We reward our partner’s investment in aligning with our strategy by seizing margin-rich opportunities through HPE Partner Ready compensation, that spans our portfolio from HPE GreenLake (17% rebate) to storage (accelerators) and Membership Acceleration.

 

We have consistently been rated being the most partner-oriented organization in the industry year after year. This is an outcome of having a very robust partner program that is mature and is continuously improvised to incorporate all the market shifts and trends. Every new fiscal year, we conduct the Total Partner Experience (TPE) survey which provides us with authentic feedback from our partners. While validating our increasing leadership position in the industry, the valuable feedback helps us improve the experience for our partners.”

 

 

Polycab handholds its partners to help them create more tailored solutions

 

ASHISH D. JAIN
Executive President and COO, Telecom Business, Polycab India

 

“An ecosystem of trusted partners facilitates in combining their diverse capabilities and simplifying the execution of value-propositions for an OEM. Partners play a positive role in deciding the strategic direction for the company’s business, which is why a Partner Support Ecosystem is the most critical covenant between an OEM and its different level of partners. Empowering the partners with a cohesive vision inspires them to give their best with accountability and helps them in prioritising their activities.

 

Key elements of Polycab’s Partner Programs

 

We, as an organization that has a strong legacy of nearly 6 decades, possess diverse business-portfolios and capabilities to bring in exceptional value to our business-partners. Empowering our partners through the right skill-set and bringing to them quality-products with ease of delivery-process and combination of different resources under one roof with healthy commercials have been the DNA of our successful approach. We literally handhold our partners to help them create more tailored solution-positioning that matches the exact needs of their customers.

 

We have a massive network of partners, spread across India. Our partner-ecosystem has unique capabilities, responding to varied customer-bases and requirements. Aiming to provide them access to a wider customer-base, create more value for their customers and increase their market-share, we have a 4-layered partner-activation in Digital-infra, Data, Gold and SMEs. We have flexible and accommodating business-models to support every level of partners.

 

We, as a company, are uniquely positioned with both, end-to-end Power & Data Solutions in the industry today. Our partners are placed better than others to identify and meet the current and future data-networking demands in our targeted segments. We have a specifically designed BACK BONE Technical Team to integrate and offer any design in the realm of combination of Power and Data.”

 

 

LogMeIn engages with the channel through consistent and ongoing communications

 

MATHEW PHILIP
Sr Director, Business Development & Alliances LogMeIn

 

“Being pioneers of the freemium business model and work from anywhere solutions, we have users and customers from micro businesses all the way to large enterprises. LogMeIn believes that partners not only amplify our access to this huge base of potential customers but are also the closest to the customer and are trusted by them to support them in their growth journey.

 

Core elements of LogMeIn’s Channel Strategy

 

LogMeIn empowers 200 million customers every day, which makes us one of the top 10 SaaS companies in the world and our products are leaders in the market. Our partner program enables partners (through expertise and investments) to acquire new customers, as well as expand their presence within their existing customers with LogMeIn’s exciting remote work solutions.

 

LogMeIn has expanded its executive leadership to be dedicated to the channel community - which includes Patrick McCue who recently joined LogMeIn as the Vice President of Global Channel Sales at LogMeIn where he leads LogMeIn’s partner strategy, program, and engagement. We have also made investments into adding marketing resources for increased regional partner marketing planning and execution. We have in-geo channel sales teams who work with the multiple partner types which include Distributors, Resellers and MSPs to enable their sales team to win in the marketplace.

 

We have Channel sales teams based out of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore who ensure all enablement and support is provided to the channel partners as they position our solutions to their customers. We will continue to engage with the channel community through consistent and ongoing communications, events and other partner forums like Partner advisory boards where partners would get an opportunity to share feedback and engage with our leadership.”

 

 

ASUS provides all the support to bring its partners’ business to the next level

 

DINESH SHARMA
Business Head, Commercial PC and Smartphone, System Business Group, ASUS India

 

“As a major player in the IT industry and with a legacy spanning 30 years, ASUS’ corporate mission is to provide innovative IT solutions that empower people and businesses to reach their full potential. Together with our ASUS channel, solution and alliance partners, we have integrated our innovation and latest technologies with their expertise to deliver a wide range of solutions. We strongly believe in collective growth, wherein we lay a lot of emphasis on partner success and their advancement. Our Channel Programs enable and empower channel partners and their team, thus creating an ecosystem where everyone thrives and creates a win-win situation.

 

Key Components of ASUS Partner Program

 

We have developed the ASUS Business Partner Program specifically for our B2B resellers. It provides tools to market and sell ASUS commercial products more successfully, as well as the opportunity to earn valuable benefits, such as rebates. Secondly, ASUS Partner Portal is designed for our channel partners to take advantage of Marketing Collateral, Price Lists, our Channel Site (for product images), and much more. We have also designed the ASUS Valued Partner Program to provide all the necessary resources and support to bring our partner’s business to the next level, and succeed in today’s competitive market.

 

To help fulfil the needs of our channel customers, we have created the ASUS Channel Site that gives all tools a partner and their teams need to meet and surpass sales projections. Aligned with our Partner Program objective, we have outlined a rebate program that provides great earning potential to our Partners. We encourage partners to maximize business opportunities by providing ‘Not For Resale’ licenses /Demo units and testing or seeding units.”

 

 

Micron boasts of a very simple and transparent channel partner program

 

RAJESH GUPTA
Director & Country Manager - Sales, Micron Technology, India

 

“A channel partner program is an important tool for a brand to have a properly structured approach in organizing channel partners, training them appropriately and equipping them to deliver better service to the end customers.

 

This allows a brand to maintain a relevant two-way communication and information that is useful for a set of channel partners focused on a specific business segment. In order to provide effective sales coverage along with pre & post-sales support, a brand requires engagements with specific channel partners that have relevant experience of supporting that business segment.

 

Key elements of Micron’s Partner Program

 

Micron has a very simple and transparent channel partner program under which all elements of support such as information download, promotions and rebates are shared in a timely manner. We are a leader in the memory space and our partners have easy as well as quick access to the product sample, continuous market updates. And because we are the leaders in the space, we also provide them with insights into new memory technologies and dedicated resources.

 

At Micron, we believe that it is extremely crucial that our channel engagement should be open and transparent with clear communications. It is important to identify the segment of focus, post which identifies partners who have demonstrated strengths and are growing in that segment to benefit both the parties and then provide them with necessary support to be successful.

 

Our leadership portfolio, product quality, supply chain agility and deep customer relationships make us a preferred partner in many of our markets, and we are confident in our ability to continue to create long-term, sustained profitability and returns built on that leadership.”