Dell EMC to double Metal Channel Partner count in Asia-Pacific Japan

Dell EMC is looking to double its Metal Channel Partner count in Asia-Pacific Japan (APJ) to 1,200 to rev up revenue growth this fiscal.

The $74-billion company, which follows a February-January fiscal year, has over 20,000 channel partners in APJ, of which 600 have been elevated to a three-tiered structure of metal partners as a part of the new unified Dell EMC channel partner programme that was globally launched last month.

“Channels contribute 70 per cent of the APJ business and over 60 per cent of the India business at present, whereas globally, channels contribute to over 50 per cent of the business. In Asia, customers want more personalised service and prefer to work with channel partners, who they treat as in-house consultants; therefore, channels are a very critical part of our overall strategy,” said Tian Beng Ng, Senior Vice-President and General Manager - Channels, Asia Pacific Japan, Dell EMC.

Stating that the new channel partner programme will start seeing results in the next 3-6 months, he said: “India is the third-largest market for the channel business in APJ, after China and Japan.”

Metal partners contribute 70 per cent of Dell EMC India business. Strategic partners, a sub-set of the metal partners, contribute 45 per cent, with the potential to contribute much more, said Anil Sethi, Vice-President, Dell EMC India Channels.

“Our strategic partners go beyond the transaction and look at re-scaling business with customers to increase the Dell EMC share in it. They are looking at ways to double the business this year with a new unified product portfolio and a new market to address, including the enterprise business, a large part of which was earlier addressed by the Dell Direct team.” Developed in collaboration with partners globally, the new channel programme’s tenets are to be simple, predictable and profitable. “While partners did not like the quarterly target cycle and low margins earned in the legacy Dell programme, they loved the profitable back-end rebates we gave them. Similarly, they liked the six-monthly target cycle and training in the legacy EMC programme, but were not happy with rebates given. We took the best of both the programmes,” explained Beng.

To keep it simple, the company’s product portfolio of 27 categories has been reduced to nine; partners can register deals on one central, unified partner portal whether they are selling a storage product or desktop. Business predictability is enhanced by changing from a quarterly to six-monthly cycle. One of the biggest issues of channel partners — profitability — has been addressed with an investment of $150 million incremental dollars globally in channel rebates.

“Partners can now earn 1.5-8 times more than they did in the old programme. Our unique proposition to partners is, we bill directly to the 600 metal partners and give them direct credit lines, depending on their financial strength. Partner profits increase as they would have had to pay something to buy it from the distributor, who buys from us,” said Sethi.

Frontier Business Systems, NewWave Computing, Hitachi MicroClinic, Orient Technologies are some of the company’s India partners.

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