Progress Report On Motorola-Symbol Channel Integration

Since Motorola closed its $3.9 billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies two months ago, former Symbol channel chief Sandy Preizler -- now vice president of worldwide channel sales at Motorola -- has been working hard to identify areas of opportunity between the two companies' partner bases.

At the time the deal was announced in September, Symbol resellers were optimistic it would bring increased stability to Symbol as a company as well as open up more products and marketing funds for partners. Some resellers, however, were concerned their past investments to qualify for Symbol's PartnerSelect program would not pay off if Symbol opened up the same devices to Motorola's 10,000 existing resellers.

There was little existing overlap between Motorola's and Symbol's partner bases, says channel VP Sandy Preizler.

However, that's not the case, Preizler says. Symbol's PartnerSelect program will operate as a distinct partner program track from Motorola's two others: one for its radio product resellers and the other for its wireless broadband resellers. Resellers will have to fulfill different requirements to gain access to the products in each of the three tracks. There was very little existing overlap between the two companies' partner bases, Preizler adds.

That said, Motorola is working to identify targeted opportunities for cross-selling areas across its three partner tracks.

"We plan to keep them as separate tracks, but where possible take advantage of each other's knowledge and capabilities," Preizler says. "Examples of this might be that Motorola in North America has a strong presence in state and local government, while Symbol is stronger in areas like retail and manufacturing where Motorola is not strong. So, in the state and local government markets, their resellers who sell wireless broadband is a good place to look for cross-selling opportunity, because they have RF expertise. So we have to figure out how to get those resellers to sell our wireless LAN products. That's something we'll look at. On the flip side, Motorola has ruggedized laptops, which make sense for our PartnerSelect partners to sell."

Partners will begin seeing the first fruits of this labor in April, Preizler says. Any potential marketing benefits would come later in the second half of the year, he says, adding that Motorola also has no plans to cut any of Symbol's products as a result of the acquisition.

Motorola is also looking to emulate some of Symbol's channel program tools, such as its partner resource manager system and Web-based tools.

Priezlier, who took the channel post at Symbol just nine months ago, says his proudest accomplishments since coming onboard have been working with distributors to build up a base of nonmanaged authorized resellers, as well as launching a new Partner Gateway as a way to consolidate all partner online resources into one place.