Bengaluru: Dell EMC, the $74 billion company, now aims to double the number of its Metal Channel Partners in Asia-Pacific Japan (APJ) to 1,200 to drive its revenue growth this fiscal, reports Hindu Business Line.
The company has over 20,000 channel partner in APJ of which 600 have been elevated to a three-tiered structure of metal partners. This is in tune with the new unified Dell EMC channel partners program, launched globally last month.
“Channels contribute 70 per cent of the APJ business and over 60 per cent of the India business at present, whereas globally, channels contribute to over 50 per cent of the business. In Asia, customers want more personalized service and prefer to work with channel partners, who they treat as in-house consultants; therefore, channels are a very critical part of our overall strategy,” the report quoted Tian Beng Ng, Senior Vice-President and General Manager – Channels, Asia Pacific Japan, Dell EMC as saying.
Beng Ng stated that India is the third largest market for the channel business in APJ after China and Japan and that the new channel program start reaping benefits in the coming three to six months.
Anil Sethi, Vice President, Dell EMC India Channels said that the contribution of metal partners to Dell EMC’s India business is 70 percent, while Strategic partners, a sub-set of the metal partners contribute 45 percent.
“Our strategic partners go beyond the transaction and look at re-scaling business with customers to increase the Dell EMC share in it. They are looking at ways to double the business this year with a new unified product portfolio and a new market to address, including the enterprise business, a large part of which was earlier addressed by the Dell Direct team.” Developed in collaboration with partners globally, the new channel program’s tenets are to be simple, predictable and profitable. “While partners did not like the quarterly target cycle and low margins earned in the legacy Dell program, they loved the profitable back-end rebates we gave them. Similarly, they liked the six-monthly target cycle and training in the legacy EMC program, but were not happy with rebates given. We took the best of both the programs,” explained Beng Ng.
“Partners can now earn 1.5-8 times more than they did in the old program. Our unique proposition to partners is, we bill directly to the 600 metal partners and give them direct credit lines, depending on their financial strength. Partner profits increase as they would have had to pay something to buy it from the distributor, who buys from us,” said Sethi.
To make things simple, the company’s product portfolio of 27 categories has been narrowed to nine and partners can register deals on one central unified partner portal irrespective of whether they are selling desktop or storage product.