Citrix gives partners incentives programme with focus on simplification, cloud profits
Programme's architect details what resellers can expect
Citrix debuted a new incentives programme, Citrix Ultimate Rewards, to channel partners during Citrix Summit in Anaheim, California this week.
Paul Fecteau, managing director of partner programs and operations at Citrix, said the goal behind the new incentives program is to increase simplification in doing business with Citrix and to drive partner profit in the cloud market.
Currently, Citrix's incentives programme has five different elements, which Fecteau said were all built at different times in Citrix's channel evolution. Each programme element has its own rules, which has required partners to know the ins and outs of five different areas in order to fully take advantage.
"We recognise that that is a challenge, especially for newer partners who aren't familiar with Citrix. But even our existing partners have been challenged on occasion," said Fecteau.
On the cloud end, Fecteau pointed out that Citrix has been accelerating its own shift to the cloud over that past few years and has urged partners to come with it.
"Cloud is a new route to market for many of our partners," he said. "Some of our partners have been selling cloud for years, but for partners who this is a new route to market for, understanding how to sell cloud, what are the value points that a customer needs to understand about a cloud offering and, probably just as important, is what services can a partner offer in regards to a cloud deal to a customer, because the services are different."
Starting 10 February, Citrix will offer two discount elements - Spark and Drive - and one quarterly rebate element - Accelerate.
Spark serves as a replacement for Citrix's Net New Partner Source program and will reward partners for identifying and registering opportunities Citrix doesn't know about.
Drive is akin to the current Citrix Advisor Rewards programme and will pay into partners' Accelerate rebate, plus offer partners a discount for delivering "value-selling activities."
Fecteau noted that after the launch of the Citrix Ultimate Rewards programme, a new system will ask partners questions about its customer and deal and then automatically identify the incentives the partner can receive.
In a blog post today, Craig Stilwell, Citrix's worldwide VP of partner sales and strategy, said Citrix has cut the number of deal-related questions partner sales reps are required to answer from as many as 30 to nine.
"While the number of automatic approvals will be relatively small at launch, as our artificial intelligence improves, we'll continue to expand the thresholds until the majority of registrations are approved or rejected automatically," he said.