Toshiba tells partners to specialise
Vendor changes messaging from one-stop shop to best of breed as it shakes up partner programme
Toshiba is encouraging its resellers to become specialists on solutions matched to one of four target market sectors as part of a partner programme revamp.
Having refreshed its messaging to end users, the notebook vendor will now bill itself as a best-of-breed player in the SMB, corporate, education and public sectors, rather than a one-stop shop.
And it wants its resellers to hone their focus accordingly.
Under the new scheme – Toshiba's first pan-European partner programme – resellers will be classified as either Platinum or Gold.
Top-level Platinum partners, of which there will be about 30 to 35 in the UK, will be expected to specialise in at least one of those four sectors, netting them more resource from Toshiba to help them generate demand. Specialisms will be awarded according to market presence in each sector, as well as the opportunity Toshiba sees for growth.
However, UK B2B sales director Neil Bramley said the partnership would be most potent if partners also specialise in specific solutions that are pertinent to their chosen verticals – LearnPad, for instance in education, or Toshiba's mobile device management solution for the corporate market.
"This alignment enables us to take a much more powerful proposition to the end-user client base," he said.
Bramley claimed that Toshiba is on course to grow double digits in the UK for its fiscal year ending this month, with its B2B headcount up by 50 per cent on last year.
"The step change in the market is that there are now multiple devices and operating system types and there is an opportunity for the channel to become an adviser and offer consultancy," he said. "We are now doing best-of-breed rather than one-stop-shop messaging and the solution and sector specialisms allow us to take a much stronger mobile best-of-breed proposition to different sectors."
Some 250 resellers will sit in the lower Gold tier, Bramley indicated.