Dell Giving Partners “Bigger Profit Opportunity Than Even Before”

Dell, Inc. unveiled a series of initiatives which strengthens and expands its commitment to channel partners helping them profitably grow their businesses.

Dell is increasing its commitment to its partners by developing a set of campaigns to drive predictability, profit and opportunity for the indirect channel worldwide.

The company is delivering a wide-ranging package of financial incentives to encourage its direct sales force to work with channel partners, in addition to making investments in training and expanded access to field equipment so channel partners can grow their businesses and help their customers architect and build future-ready data centers.

New PartnerDirect Programs and Incentives
As part of its expanded commitment to channel partners Dell is announcing a series of new programs and behaviors to drive joint business.

• Financial Incentives: Dell will financially compensate direct sales reps to collaborate with channel partners and help them close business. Dell will provide sales representatives a net new 20% compensation accelerator for any sale of PowerEdge VRTX, storage, networking, software, thin client, workstations and SecureWorks solutions to a new customer which is delivered through channel partners. The company will offer accelerators to sell these solutions and expanded rebates for multiple products in one deal.
• Coverage Models: Deal Registration will continue to allow partners to identify all opportunities they have in any accounts. Channel partners will also benefit from Dell moving to a channel-led approach for specifically targeted accounts. The creation of named customer accounts enables partners to identify and target specific companies and drive for greater profitability within those accounts with the assurance of no conflict from Dell.
• Expanded Access to Dell Equipment: The company will increase its investment in demonstration units, product to seed with customers and lab gear available to its channel partners by more than 500%. It is applying dedicated budget and resources to make sure partners have the tools, training and products they need to win new business.

Enterprise Solutions Expand Channel Opportunities
As IT moves from being the backbone of business to being the business, customers’ must enable faster, more secure access to information, modern software and applications, as well as optimized workloads and ensure the business is competitive. In the past year, Dell has introduced new solutions to help customers successfully navigate this rapidly changing IT landscape and prepare their data centers for the future. These solutions give channel partners more opportunities to expand their relationships with existing customers and establish relationships with new ones.

These channel-friendly solutions include:

• PowerEdge VRTX – It integrates servers, storage, networking and management into a single office-optimized chassis the size of a tower server. It puts the power and function of a complete data center into one small package. It has won many industry awards including last week when it was recognized as Server of the Year for 2013.
• Storage – The storage portfolio is designed with built-in efficiency, resiliency and agility to help ensure customers can always access the right data at the right time at the right price. Storage approach improves IT storage economics with innovative approaches to flash that offer all-flash at the price of disk solutions.
• Networking – It offers open, standards-based architectures for interoperability and choice, better-together solutions engineered to improve IT efficiencies and economics, and easy-to-use software tools to streamline and simplify operations and service delivery, enabling customers to save money, grow and maximize productivity.
• Software – It makes it easy to securely manage and protect applications, systems, devices and data to help organizations of all sizes fully deliver on the promise of technology. Simple yet powerful software – combined with Dell hardware and services – provide scalable, integrated solutions to drive value and accelerate results.
• Thin Client – Dell offers a selection of secure, reliable, cost-effective thin clients designed to easily integrate into any virtualized or web-based infrastructure, while meeting the budget and performance requirements for any application.
• Workstations – They are powerful tower, rack and mobile workstations, featuring graphics capabilities and storage capacity along with design features that enable expansion.
• SecureWorks – Information security services help customers protect IT assets, comply with regulations and reduce costs – without having to build internal security expertise from scratch.

New Global Dell Organization Structure for Stronger Channel Focus
In November, Dell combined its channel and direct sales teams into a single organization to encourage collaboration and a focus on customer outcomes. This is a next step in the maturation of channel business and creates opportunities partners to make more money and grow their businesses. By merging its channel and segment sales teams under a single leadership, it improves its go-to-market model and for partners to create consistency, predictability, faster decision-making, and culture that rewards joint territory planning across its direct and indirect sales channels. As both sales teams now report into, and are governed by, the same management structure, customers should expect similar behavior from Dell if they are working with a direct sales representatives or one of channel partners.

Now more than six years old, Dell PartnerDirect was built and continues to be enhanced based on partner feedback. The program has grown to account for approximately one third of the company’s commercial revenue and is growing at a multiple to the market. PartnerDirect has been lauded by the industry with hundreds of awards in its tenure and now includes more than 143,000 global partners, including thousands of Preferred and Premier Partners.

PartnerDirect Program Update Availability
These program enhancements and new compensation programs are targeted to launch in North America February 1, 2014, with other regions to be added through 2014. Specific details will be communicated directly to PartnerDirect partners.

“These new programs, assurances and incentives demonstrate the Dell is truly committed to the channel. We have been a partner of Dell for more than six years and look forward to a continued collaboration to help more customers stay ahead of the rapid changes in IT,” said Michael Butz, president and CEO, UltraLevel, Inc. “We are confident that Dell will work with us to share the knowledge, technology and tools to deliver new solutions and value-added services to our clients, which will help us profitably grow our business.”

“Dell understands the solutions expertise and value channel partners and VARs bring to customers. We want to provide our valued partners with the technology, tools and strength of the Dell brand to grow their businesses faster than the market and win new customers with Dell,” said Cheryl Cook, VP global channels and alliances, Dell. “Actions speak louder than words, so we are making a significant monetary investment to make it easier for partners to work with us and to encourage Dell sales representatives to partner with the channel like never before. Dell is doubling down on training, product and incentives that give our partners greater economic value than competitors, and make it easier to collaborate with Dell to bring more innovative IT solutions to more customers around the world.”