ViewSonic Revamps Channel Program

Display vendor ViewSonic is revamping its channel program with a new flooring option, which will give partners up to 60 days to pay for inventory.

The channel program, called Access, also includes new incentives for overall growth per quarter of up to 4 percent and a new lead-generation program. ViewSonic officials say the flooring option, to be offered on select display and projector products, is the most noteworthy addition to the program, to be launched Monday, June 26.

Typical flooring programs require payment of 30 days, requiring many channel partners to hold paper on products sold until end-user customers make their payments. By extending the flooring window, ViewSonic officials say partners in many cases can receive payments by the time their own payments are due.

"This provides a painless way of having no payments until the end user pays them," says Jeff Volpe, ViewSonic's vice president of marketing for the Americas. Only a handful of major IT vendors offer 60-day flooring arrangements, the most prominent being Cisco, says Steve Woo, ViewSonic's vice president of channel marketing and sales operations.

"When you talk to the resellers and the financial houses that do flooring for Cisco, they will tell you people will buy more product because of the extended terms," he says.

"Any time you can offer somebody 60-day terms, it's kind of a no brainer," adds Mark Conrad, an account executive with Atlanta-based Prosys Information Systems, a ViewSonic partner.

While ViewSonic updates its channel programs yearly, Volpe says this year's upgrade is more substantive than those in the past. The aggressive change comes as rivals such as Hewlett-Packard put pressure on their partner bases to attach more displays and other peripherals with their sales of PCs and other products.

Volpe says he knows about HP's AttachPlus program, but that it played no role in ViewSonic's new channel incentives.

"Resellers value their reputations, and they value account control," Volpe said. "For them to bundle may not always be the best program for their customers," he said.

So far, ViewSonic has not seen any loss of business from HP's efforts. In fact, during the past six months, the company's unit shipments have increased, he says.

ProSys' Conrad, also an HP partner, is well aware of HP's AttachPlus program, but in the end, the solution provider offers what customers request.

"It comes down to what the client requires and what's on their existing standards lists," Conrad says.