Dell Technologies investing in partners end-to-end Experience

Dell Technologies is helping to transform people’s lives with extraordinary capabilities. From Hybrid cloud solutions to high-performance computing to ambitious social impact and sustainability initiatives, the company is impacting everyone and everywhere. The company is a pioneer of innovation and is driving the digital revolution forward. By embracing the differences and investing time in diversity, its leaders foster a culture of innovation and inclusion that enables the company to create technology that ensures widespread accessibility and impactful improvements to daily life. In a chat with VARINDIA, Anil Sethi, Vice President & General Manager, Channels – India, Dell Technologies delves deep in the key initiatives for the channel partners, measures taken while enabling the growth for the channel partners, the company’s partner program, upcoming major trends etc.

Key initiatives to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the channel partners
Talking about the growth of the company and the impact on its channel partners Anil says, “Dell Technologies India grew 64% year-on-year (y/y) in FY22, which was a record year for India business, with back-to-back record quarters. We reported 61% y/y growth alone in Q4FY22. Our demand velocity reflects how businesses continue to prioritize their digital transformation to help meet customer needs and improve productivity. This demand continued in Q1FY23 as our channel business in India recorded 44% y/y growth.

We launched our 2022 Dell Technologies Partner Program at the beginning of the year with a renewed focus on - Together, We Stop at Nothing. This celebrates the fifth anniversary of the program and its continued success with the partner community. In the span of five years, the Dell Technologies APJ Channel has achieved 70% growth. The program and strategy have been working hard for partners: Rebates payout has grown 80% and earned Marketing Development Funds (MDF) has increased by 95%.”

With ever evolving needs and the continuously changing industry due to COVID, customers seek partners who have their back and can offer world’s best solutions to deliver the results they are looking for. Understanding the importance of financing and cash flow liquidity, the company rolled out Partner Relief Package in early 2020 with an intent to provide immediate financial relief to its metal partners, while helping them build capabilities and pipeline for the future. In 2021, it continued raising the bar on partner experience, offering new digital enhancements like incentive centres, new quoting tools in OSC and APEX.

Anil continues, “Our brand-new Incentives Center gave our partners an increased visibility and insight across all their program incentives in one centralized location – for Rebates, MDF (Marketing Development Funds), and MyRewards (incentive for partner sales specialists). We are committed to investing in our partner’s end-to-end experience with us and are excited for the opportunities that will allow Dell Technologies and its partners to create together, partnering for the future.”

Empowering channel partners to enable growth
As per Anil the Channel ecosystem has played a pivotal role in expanding the footprint of Dell Technologies. He points out, “We are committed to grow this further by enhancing partner experience levels and building services led go-to-market strategies, aided by new incentives and distribution support. The updated Dell Technologies Partner Program for 2022 streamlines and enhances the partner experience across multiple program tracks. Solution Providers, Cloud Service Providers and OEM partners can enjoy one regional incentive structure, one tier structure, and one set of tier requirements. The consistency across these tracks and their associated selling motions – such as reselling, hosting, and embedding – enables partners to focus on positioning the best solution for their customers while earning consistent, lucrative incentives, regardless of route to market.”

Dell Technologies’ partner program has been rated as one of the best in the industry and the company is ranked in champions’ quadrant by Canalys. With the partner feedback process, it has found that even its partners view its program as simple, predictable and profitable. Based on the company’s partner program, they are able to plan their resources better, decide on the opportunity strategy more accurately and have more controlled and beneficial outcomes.

“We are keeping our program structure and engagement with partners consistent while we continue to invest in key focus areas. We design our rules of engagement (ROE) around deal registration and to govern our internal sales team behaviour in a way that promotes customer choice while protecting the integrity of our partner program principles. We make sure that partners are engaged and understand all the capabilities that we have. We listen to their feedback, and we will continue to review our operational model to ensure we’re optimizing and simplifying our engagement with partners, which we know is important to both our partners and our sales teams,” says Anil.

Dell Technologies’ 2022 Partner Program
Dell Technologies 2022 Partner Program is more streamlined and designed for personalized end-to-end experience. On this Anil comments, “The program offers more rebates and rewards for channel partners in Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) as we enhance partner experiences to enable business transformation and drive growth. Dell Technologies is doubling down on storage, with a midrange storage 5X tier revenue accelerator and a new 2% incremental rebate kicker for acquisition and Tech Refresh opportunities for Dell PowerStore and Dell Unity XT solutions. The storage competitive swap rebate is increased to 9%, the same rate as storage new business incentive. We have also started training our partners on Apex Flex-on-Demand offering which will be the new way to consume IT. Dell APEX creates opportunities for channel partners to offer customers flexible and simplified IT solutions. 2022 Partner Program has been adapted to increase the velocity in their business, simplify their experience, and maintain our shared rapid growth.”

Upcoming major trends in the Channel Market
Speaking about the major trends in near future, Anil perceives, “We are living in a do-anything-from-anywhere economy enabled by an exponentially expanding data ecosystem. We will see both near-term and long-term technology predictions that address the way the IT industry will deliver the platforms and capabilities to harness this data to transform our experiences at work, home and in the classroom. In the coming years, we will see:

The opening of the private mobility ecosystem will accelerate with more cloud and IT industries involved on the path to 5G Edge will become the new battleground for data management as data management becomes a new class of workload – demanding specific solutions and skills. This in-turn will generate huge demand for storage management, data storage, optimization, protection and analytics for all enterprises – small or large The security industry will move from discussion of emerging security concerns towards concrete action”

As a key differentiator for the channel partners
According to Anil, “The rapid introduction of new, sophisticated infrastructure and application solutions is upon us as emerging technologies hit their stride. Information technology is becoming more specialized, not standardized, requiring both Partners and OEMs alike to build expertise. Organizations and Partners should focus on re-skilling and upskilling of their workforce to stay relevant in the market and navigating through these tough times. In order to ensure business continuity, we should bank on new breakthroughs and technology trends, which will set the tone for what is to come over the next 10 years:

Remote Work Solutions and Cloud solutions: CIOs will make connect workplace and data visibility a top IT imperative because after all Intelligent devices change the way you work and collaborate: Advancements in AI and machine learning will turn our PCs into even smarter and more collaborative companions Innovating with integrity, sourcing sustainably: Investments in reuse and recycling for closed-loop innovation will accelerate, hardware will become smaller and more efficient and built with recycled and reclaimed goods, which will minimize e-waste and maximize the already existing materials”

To conclude
In his concluding words Anil remarks that 2021-22 was the best year in Dell’s history with record revenue and performance. There is a big technology outcome that its customers and partners are seeing and investing in, and they are proud of these results. In India, Dell Technologies’ direct business grew 43% Y/Y in Q12022, which complements the demand the company has seen. As per IDC’s Q12022 results for PC market, Dell Technologies has secured a second position with a 19.4% share and 22.6% YoY growth in 1Q22.
“In technology business, change is constant and so is expansion. With the technology adoption growing in India, our business has also grown significantly faster than the market. This has resulted in continuous growth with more partners and customers engaging with Dell Technologies,” concludes Anil.