Acer readies resellers for corporate push

Consumer and SMB specialist fancies chances in the enterprise space as it launches new partner programme

Acer is arming its 2,000 UK resellers for an enterprise assault with the launch of a new partner programme.

Using its recent Olympics Games win as a reference site, Acer is aiming to re-invent itself as a viable alternative to the likes of HP and Dell in the corporate space and in the past year has recalibrated its sales force and overhauled its support to that end.

Next month, the Taiwanese vendor will launch a new five-tier partner programme classifying partners as either Platinum, Gold, Silver, high-performance computing or Point, depending on their expertise. A special bid-pricing tool has been introduced for the first time.

Nathan Knight, commercial business unit manager of Acer UK, told ChannelWeb: "Historically, resellers have had to access information from distribution and the quality of that information has not been great. We are now taking control of that, for instance in terms of product guides, road maps, training and marketing.

"Our strength historically has been in low-end SMB. This programme is about empowering our resellers to access to corporate market."

To bolster its credibility, Acer has increased the breadth of its warranty offering - for instance to include four-hour support - and introduced a dedicated commercial escalation team.

Acer already counts Softcat, European Electronique and Probrand among its large resellers and Knight said there is no rush to recruit more top names. "We are not going to push our investment into guys that are historical incumbents with our competitors and we are happy with who we have."

He added: "The two key values we offer to them is that we are 100 per cent indirect and do not sell hardware or services to their end customers. They can comfortably represent their business using Acer. And then we have one of the broadest portfolios on the market."