Dell partner program gets a facelift

Dell has announced significant changes to its Partner Program at Dell World with an aim to boost its enterprise solutions business.

The changes will be effective February 1, 2014.

Elaborating on this, Marius Haas, chief commercial officer and president, Enterprise Solutions, Dell, said, "We moved the channel organization from being a separate team in every region, in every country into a mainstream sales organization. For instance, Alok Ohrie, President and MD, Dell India, who heads Dell in India, now also owns the direct sales force, indirect sales force and online. So now he has a broader overview of the market, partners and the biggest ecosystem."

Dell will also increase its investment in demo and field equipment by a factor of 5X. It also made a 4X investment in its Partner Advantage bonus program.

Commenting on the company's initiative to move Dell direct accounts into the channel, Haas said, "These will be designated channel-led accounts. To begin with, 250,000 direct accounts will now be pushed into the channel. And Dell will help the channel sell into those accounts." Haas said Dell will be giving its direct sales team a kicker of 20 percent to help accelerate sales of seven key solutions including networking, storage, software, security, PowerEdge VRTX, thin client, and workstations.

Meanwhile,Ohrie, who was also present at the event, also spoke about the company's channel initiative. "We are a new entrant to the market, having started our channel initiatives just two years ago. And there are multiple routes to the market, the channel being just one of these. So it takes a longer period of time to establish channel maturity. About 2-3 months ago, we rationalized our channel initiatives in India, to bring in more engagement and clarity. We will soon introduce a new coverage model for India. For instance, we established our Dell VRTX champion program with 12 channel partners. We will also offer them fair compensation," he said.