Dell Technologies revamps its channel strategy for the new financial year

As the new financial year is coming up, Dell Technologies has come up with an array of announcements regarding its new partner program, rebates and solutions.

“As we head into 2020, our commitment to partners remains strong and steady. We are continuing to raise our bar on our promise of simple, predictable, profitable. This starts with our simplified go-to-market structure,” said Joyce Mullen, President, Global Channel, Embedded & Edge Solutions – Dell Technologies.

She further added, “Dell Technologies recorded 52 billion dollars in orders over the past year. Our opportunity is enormous, our momentum is strong and our partnerships are more solid than ever. This is our year to help customers turn data into one of their most valuable assets, and it starts right now.” 

Partner Program

Based on its core tenets of Simple, Predictable and Profitable, Dell Technologies always strives to deliver the best partner program. These three tenets, along with its partners’ direct feedback from Partner Advisory Boards, Partner Summits and Satisfaction surveys, guide the evolution of the Dell Technologies partner program.

“Our 2020 Dell Technologies Partner Program for Solution Providers will provide an even more compelling business proposition through three main focus areas -
•    Increased opportunity and profitability for new customer and line of business acquisition
•    A simplified structure, making it more predictable and easier to manage your Dell business 
•    An improved end-to-end experience accelerating the time to get to a winning price and improving the predictability of partner’s overall incentives,” said Darren Sullivan- SVP, Global Partner Strategy, Programs & Operations – Dell Technologies. 
He further explained that for increase in opportunity and profitability, the company is investing in new business acquisition with partners, and expanding the Partner Preferred Program by adding new target customers for server acquisition to the existing storage accounts. The combined go-to-market structure of the company will make engagement with partners easier and more effective.
He added, “In addition, we are continuing our New Business Incentive as a reward for bringing new customers and new lines of business to Dell. Also for Storage, we’re continuing the Competitive Swap rebate for opportunities in which you are displacing a competitive product in an account that isn’t included on our named NBI list.
The bottom line is - Focus on the right new business targets which maximizes profitability, both through increased upfront discounts and backend rebates in the Dell Technologies Partner Program.”

Rebates

Dell Technologies has consolidated its product base rebate structure from seven lines of business and two or three sub-categories within each line of business to three lines of business - Client, Server and Storage. The company has also introduced base rebate multipliers on particular products to reward targeted behaviour.

The company has plans to eliminate the quarterly target process as well as increasing program automation to make partner’s in-quarter earnings easier to forecast and reduce the number of adjustments required after quarter-end. Dell Technologies is also introducing five global program zones to help make tier revenue requirements more realistic and attainable for partners operating in smaller countries in EMEA, Latin America and Asia Pacific

In line with this, Ng TianBeng – SVP, Channel Sales APJ explained, “We have simplified the partner program by consolidating our product rebate structure to just three lines of business; Client, Server and Storage. We have removed quarterly targets to improve predictability while automating other processes to make it easier to forecast partner’s quarterly earnings. Our investments are in projects that will improve the end-to-end partner experience. We will further optimize quoting tools to help our partners better calculate their potential gross margin position for each product, with a fast, seamless and intuitive online experience”
Beng added, “Furthermore, we have just launched a Deal Registration dashboard to distributors that make it easier to view and use opportunities directly in a partner portal. We are rolling out two more phases so that partners with Dual Registration capability will have access to this dash board as well. Complimenting predictability and simplicity, our base rebate multipliers will be on focused products to reward targeted behavior. These multipliers will cover specific products such as Precision Workstation, Rugged Notebooks, Client Peripherals, Displays, 7 and 9 series laptops for Client category and Power Edge 4-socket and Blade Servers for server category. Our focus this financial year is to provide partners with incremental benefits that will drive their pursuit of new business and reward their continued and growing engagement with us.
Basis the improved NPS calls, the top three areas of improvement are - 
•    Our marketing materials and customer-facing information
•    Online training and cost variety and benefits for certified partners finding margins
•    Opportunity for financial incentives.”

Solutions
Talking about its new solutions, Joyce Mullen said, “Dell Technologies is introducing solutions like Power One and the Dell Technologies Cloud that incorporates IP for many of the Dell Technologies companies, it’s all about making it easier for partners to embrace and use those solutions to help solve customer problems. We are thus making sure that if a partner takes training with VMware on their cloud module for example, that counts towards the Dell Technology cloud certification and competencies.”