NaviSite aims for 80 per cent channel-centricity in UK
The Time Warner Cable company appoints regional channel director to grow UK market
Cloud services firm NaviSite Europe has laid out plans to increase its partner base throughout the UK, and conduct the majority of its business through the channel.
Following the appointment of David Penny as regional channel director, the firm has said the channel will ultimately account for four-fifths of its UK business.
“It is safe to say that we are generally moving more into a channel-based model. Historically we were 100 per cent direct,” Penny said.
“At the moment it is about 50/50 direct to indirect, and in a couple of years I hope to get that down to 80/20 in favour of the channel.”
The Time Warner Cable company - which provides application management and managed cloud services for enterprises, competing with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure – currently has around 12 partners in the UK.
Penny did not specify how many resellers he was planning to recruit going forward, but commented that he was not looking for hundreds of partners. Those that do get signed up to NaviSite’s channel will be able to sell through either traditional sales or referral models.
The company’s referral model sees partners earn commission by selling alongside the vendor on some of the bigger sales, as opposed to the traditional method of resellers working directly with customers.
Partners must fill out a bid registration form for every customer, which the vendor would then look at to see if it should be involved in the sale or not.
“A lot of our projects are from large clients; in some cases the partner just isn’t big enough to trade with that end user. In that scenario we transact directly with that end user and pay a standard base commission of 10 per cent,” said Penny.
As part of his role, Penny will also oversee the introduction of a new partner programme. He said that although it is based on the US model, it will be tailored to the UK, including dedicated channel management, marketing funds and reseller discounts up to 20 per cent.
“The formal channel programme is being led by the US. Some of that I am inheriting, but in some cases I will be doing some things slightly different, so it’s more relevant to the UK,” he said.
“We don’t have tiers like you would with other programmes, what we do have is volume pricing. We have a manageable number or partners that we will give dedicated resources to, and the more they sell the better buy price they get.”