Dell EMC to push $35bn business through the channel
$7 of every $15 generated to travel through partners, Michael Dell says at Dell EMC World
The combined forces of Dell and EMC push an annual total of $35bn in revenue through the channel - equating to about $7 of every $15 the newly united vendor generates in sales.
That is the assertion of Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell. In a press conference at the vendor's Dell EMC World event currently taking place in Las Vegas, Dell indicated to Channelnomics Europe that an estimated figure equating to about 47 per cent of the firm's turnover is generated indirectly. Both Dell and EMC have, independently, been on a drive to ramp up their channel business in the last few years, but the company chief refused to be drawn on whether the merger might impact the pace of that shift.
"The way we think about it is we have a business that is both direct and indirect. Today roughly $35bn of our roughly $75bn in revenues is done through partners. But we do not think ‘is this [portion] going to go up, or is that [portion] going to go down?' - we are growing both direct and indirect," he said.
The eponymous leader went on to claim that a wide range of partners are contributing to Dell EMC's growth. He added that they have responded positively since the merger closed eight months ago.
"The partners bring capabilities to Dell EMC, and their reaction to the combination of Dell and EMC has been tremendous," he said. "The partner programme is a big, important part of our success. And that is not just [about] what you would think of as traditional partners, it is also the system integrators, and we also have an OEM business where we have thousands of partners who are embedding our technology into their solutions."
In another Q&A with the media, chief commercial officer Marius Haas claimed that the vendor expects to post "double-digit growth" in indirect sales this year. Dell EMC debuted its first united channel scheme in February, and the CCO counselled those partners currently taking a cautious approach to investing in progression that they are in danger of losing out.
"We did not downgrade anybody; they were grandfathered in and [told] ‘this is what you need to do to go to the next level'. Some partners are taking a little bit of a wait-and-see approach… but they are going to fall further behind," he said.
Following the swift integration of Dell and EMC's channel programmes and partner-facing staff, the vendor has now more-or-less completed the union of the two sets of internal sales professionals. Haas admitted that there has been some headcount reduction, primarily in the mid-market space.
"Where there might have been some change is in the commercial sales organisation. When we [examined] the enterprise sales organisation and the commercial sales organisation, there was some duplicating of resources in the end-user space. We protected the enterprise [teams] as much as we could," he said.
Since 6 February all sales staff have now been assigned their accounts, Haas indicated, and individual quotas followed thereafter. Dell EMC opted to give sales workers six-monthly targets, which represents the middle ground between the 90-day quotas Dell typically used pre-merger, and the yearly cycles previously employed by EMC.