GE pumps Finance into its channel
Vendor to encourage financial cooperation and speed integration
Martin Vessey, UK country manager at Access Distribution, has reiterated sister company General Electric's (GE's) aim to support its channel with credit and loans through its GE Corporate Finance division.
Vessey, who joined the distributor on 14 August, said: "We have to make sure our channel partners are up to scratch on finance, and we have put financial packages together to support growth.
"GE Corporate Finance is a major financial services organisation, as well as a media organisation, and we have to use all of our skills and resources."
Vessey said he was brought in to "speed up [the] integration" of tplc, a distributor that GE Access bought last year. He also intends to help partners sell more Sun products and services.
Access Distribution, formerly GE Access, was renamed by parent company GE earlier this month in a re-branding exercise.
Greg Carlow, managing director of reseller Repton, was cautious about the finance initiative.
"The idea of using GE Corporate Finance is not without merit, but it is limited. A company can only obtain a certain amount of credit, and there's not much GE or anyone else can do to improve that," Carlow said.
"It all depends on how much of a risk it is prepared to take."
Vessey reiterated that Sun is Access's largest vendor. But he added that it has also continued to sign up ISVs. "We plan to do two things: firstly, move forward, both on the services capacity we offer to our channel and on wider financing.
"Secondly, we want to focus on channel development. Our two key teams are the account management team and [head of channel development] David Kehoe"s channel management team," said Vessey.
The firm intends to recruit three more application-specific VARs this quarter, he added.