Five commitments Dell EMC is making to partners
CRN sister publication Channelnomics Europe rounds up the key improvements the vendor is planning to make to boost partner engagement
Dell EMC announced scores of changes and additions to how it engages with channel partners at its Global Partner Summit at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas
CRN sister publication Channelnomics Europe heard from Dell EMC's channel executive line up to bring you five key commitments Dell EMC is making to channel partners.
Faster deal registration and price quoting
Speaking to channel partners at Dell Technologies' Global Partner Summit in Las Vegas, president of global channel, OEM and IoT solutions Joyce Mullen said Dell EMC's deal registration process and price quoting will become faster and more accurate.
By the end of the year, Dell EMC has pledged that most deal registration requests will be responded to within four hours, with the exception of storage deals which could take as long as 48 hours. In addition, the vendor has committed to turning around 80 per cent of price quotes within four hours, and 95 per cent within 24 hours.
"One of our goals is to make it easier for you to transact with us and make money. We have heard loud and clear that if we do nothing else, we must get this part right. That is why it is my personal number one priority," said Mullen.
Faster deal registration and quoting will particularly benefit Dell EMC's mid-market partners, according to EMEA channel boss Michael Collins, who said these firms have been particularly vocal about improving how Dell EMC transacts with the channel.
"If you're slow, the fast [competitors] will eat you. They'll even eat you with inferior products," he told Channelnomics Europe. "I don't think you can ever really be fast enough, you can only be not fast enough."
He added: "The further you go from very large customers with big roll out projects and long sales cycles, as you get down to the mid-market, customers are much more demanding, have much smaller IT departments and you could argue they therefore do much less planning and want to make quicker decisions and have a much faster service. When I meet with smaller and smaller partners, those are the ones who complain more and more [about Dell EMC's transaction speed]."
Titanium Black status will now also apply to VMware and other Dell brands
Mullen said Dell EMC's top-tier Titanium Black partners will now also see their status recognised across other Dell Technologies brands, including VMware, Pivotal and Virtustream.
Titanium Black partners will receive a "concierge service" across the Dell Technologies brands, according to Mullen.
Dell EMC's invite-only status currently applies to 10 partners worldwide after the addition of Swisscom and Itochu this year, joining current members Atea, Bechtle, CDW, Computacenter, FusionStorm, Insight, SHI and World Wide Technologies.
$60,000 in storage rebates up for grabs
Mullen said Dell EMC has invested over $1bn in improving partner incentives, especially around its storage portfolio.
The vendor announced the launch of two new all-flash arrays to its SC range towards the end of last year and added a range of software products to its Unity portfolio in response to increased pressure from competition in the storage market.
The new products coincided with the launch of Dell EMCs Future-Proof Loyalty Storage Programme, providing partners with a three-year satisfaction guarantee for customers buying from its SC and Unity ranges.
Selling storage with Dell EMC could see channel representatives earn as much as $60,000 in rebates for each deal under the vendor's MyRewards programme.
The new programme is an opt-in, points-based rewards scheme for sales representatives and systems engineers, and replaces Dell EMC's current Partner Advantage and Sell and Earn programmes.
Up to $10,000 is up for grabs for selling modern infrastructure, $20,000 for cross selling data protection, and $30,000 for net new accounts or competitive swaps. Rebates could total up to $60,000 per deal, split between sales representatives and systems engineers.
Dell EMC's vice chairman of products and operations Jeff Clarke told channel delegates that selling storage was a priority for 2018. He said storage rebates increased 70 per cent year on year in 2017 - an additional $157m.
"To show how serious we are about taking market share, we are extending an eight per cent rebate to any competitive swap. Talk about profitable. None of our competitors are offering anything like this," he said.
Dell EMC isn't the only vendor to have ramped up storage rebates as of late. IBM recently announced a new programme that could see sales reps and system engineers pocket $100,000 in stackable annual rebates with a limit of $30,000 per deal.
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Five commitments Dell EMC is making to partners
CRN sister publication Channelnomics Europe rounds up the key improvements the vendor is planning to make to boost partner engagement
Cutting out duplicate certifications
Channel execs also announced that Dell EMC will cut our duplicate certifications across the Dell Technologies brands, in an effort to reduce time spent on training for channel partners.
As a result, a partner with cloud certifications on VMware, for example, will not have to obtain the corresponding certification with Dell EMC.
Mullen said the move will make it easier for partners to do business across all Dell Technologies brands, as well as cut out unnecessary training for partners.
Collins added: "The feedback we received from partners when we established a programme was we need to be competitive in terms of training hours. It's a big investment in partners to get certified; it is important for their customers and their employees. We need to be competitive in how much training needs to be taken in order to get to that certification level," he said.
‘Do-it-yourself' Dell EMC Ready Stack
As an alternative to buying Dell EMC's pre-bundled hyper-converged VxRail offering, partners now have the option to integrate their own converged stack through combining the vendor's server, storage and networking products. The Ready Stack aims to give partners the ability to add their own integration services instead of buying a readymade hyper-converged stack from Dell.
"Larger partners tend to buy products that are more converged by the vendor, but if you go down to the mid-market, partners play a much bigger role in taking a build model and creating a solution for the customer," he said.
"They buy the servers already, add a bit of software and cut a server up into a bit of backup, a bit of storage and a bit of compute and create a converged platform for their customers. They get peace of mind knowing that they're buying engineered solutions that work well together. They don't have to test it, or think about if they're going to get the best performance out of different combinations," he said.