Oki Data Rips And Replaces Channel Program

In talking to CEO Stewart Krentzman last week, it's clear to me that Oki Data thought it best to give its partner program a complete makeover (not a refresh) to dovetail better with its much more aggressive set of product offerings: "We needed to throw it all away and start over. You just don't evolve programs that were designed to work five years ago," he said.

Bottom line, the company is looking for more committed partners that are hungry to grow their own businesses. At the core of what they are trying to do with the new program, which is being rolled out over the next several weeks, is to develop individual business plans for those partners ready to commit. These plans would include setting specific goals for the partner, ranging from hitting a certain sales target to increasing his percentage of a market like public sector, for example.

Oki Data is pledging its own resources to help execute these business plans, whether that's assigning an additional channel rep, pumping up sales development funds, or assisting partners in the transition to managed services. The company has set up a series of accountability metrics to monitor business plan performance, including monthly conference calls with partners, weekly sales rep calls, and a dashboard interface system that tracks the agreed-upon activities. This way, Krentzman says, Oki Data and partners can make adjustments in real time if the plans start to falter.

The new program is called Profitops. Krentzman says the beauty of the business-planning aspect of the program is that it should not only help solution provider partners sell printers, but provide training that will allow them to reap success in other related products such as laptops to storage devices.

"My ultimate goal is to refresh our VAR community one VAR at a time and rebuild and grow their businesses with them," Krentzman told me last week. "It's not a one-time project."

Oki Data's commitment is clear. The company also knows that to penetrate the SMB space and cover as much ground as possible with new products, it is going to need the channel more than ever.

But just how much vendor control does the individual solution provider want on his or her business plans? Write to me at [email protected].