Dell Technologies Enhanced Partner Programs To Ensure More Profitability

Dell Technologies has revealed the changes it will make to its channel programme this year with the vendor looking to make it easier for partners to achieve gold status.

In an update to partners, the firm's president global channels, OEM and IoT solutions Joyce Mullen said that there would not be any dramatic changes but it had listened to partner feedback and was making enhancements to the existing programme. "You shouldn't see or expect major changes, just improvements and refinements in the areas that are most important to you," she said.

Most of the changes concern the requirements that partners need to gain to move up the tiers of the Dell partner programme and the simplifying of rebate processes.

Darren Sullivan, senior vice president, global partner strategy and business operations at Dell Technologies, said that the benefits of the programme would remain consistent but it had chosen to make enhancements based on feedback.

The vendor has gold, platinum and titanium tiers which channel partners can reach by gaining revenue, training and services targets.

The more significant refinements include a further simplified market development funds (MDF) process, the addition of more products to the company’s rebate programs, and a reduction in the number of trained employees need to achieve Gold status.

Sullivan said revenue requirements have been simplified to a single path, and the requirement to sell multiple lines of business was removed. He also noted that the company is extending its tier credit multipliers throughout the year.

“Each dollar of storage and data protection revenue will count three times toward tier credit, and hyperconverged infrastructure revenue will count one-and-a-half times. With these multipliers in place for a full year, you can really accelerate your status in our program,” he said.

Joyce Mullen, president of global channels at Dell EMC, predicted the amount of data the world is expected to generate by 2020, and according to IDC, that number is 44 zettabytes (or 44 trillion gigabytes).“There are massive opportunities on the horizon,” she said. “And customers will be looking to you more than ever as a trusted advisor…and we want to be right there to back you up.”