Novell's Channel Chief Reasserts Partner Focus

After roughly 90 days on the job, Novell's new VP of Global Channel Sales, Pat Bernard, knows the company has some work to do in order to regain a partner-centric focus -- and the trust of former partners. By focusing on margin protection and weaving partnering into every aspect of the business, Bernard says Novell can begin to realize its vision to be a preferred channel partner for the most companies it can get.

"Executing against that starts to build trust and predictability and helps us reach a lot of those partners who had been slighted in the past and have decided to move onto another vendor," she said. "We have got to build a very compelling value proposition that's wrapped up in a little humility, frankly."

Bernard said offering margin protection is going to be a key issue going forward, and outlined four categories, what she calls focus areas, that Novell plans to base their partner strategy on. She said making partners more profitable is the first and most important point to accentuate. "There is no more important thing that we can do," she said. Secondly, helping partners invest in the growth of their Novell business and increase demand through sales support and pipeline building bolsters trust and provides margin protection, she said.

The third focus area concerns the enablement and facilitation of partner success. "We need to give them the sales and the tech training so they can be successful as independent sales agents for us," she said.

The fourth, and widest ranging, part of the strategy is to create a fully partner-centric company. "We've really started to weave partnering into everything we do," she said, including changes in the company's engineering department, integrated product development process and assessments Novell is doing to ensure products are tailored for the channel. These are the kinds of things that make a company channel-centric," she said. "We're at a place right now where we're very committed to being very clear to what we're doing and why we're doing it."

Bernard says building a successful channel has been "particularly challenging" for Novell, and admits the company now needs to focus on enabling partners and display a commitment to be thinking about partners first. "It is important to be able to go back to existing partners, new partners and partners who have left us, and to be very clear that we're here to help grow your business," she said.

Part of that is about creating an ongoing dialogue with them, and she said Novell plans to expand that communication by cultivating active feedback with partners and offering services like 24/7 technical support and Web portals dedicated to channel partners.

"Executing on that starts to build trust and predictability and helps us reach a lot of those partners who had been slighted in the past and have decided to move onto another vendor," she said. "It's important that we can communicate our value and intent to the partner community in a very simple way."

Bernard said building more programs around margin protection is going to be "critical," as well as providing increased sales support. "In the past year, we deployed about half of our field organization toward partners," she said. "Many of them before were in direct selling roles, but we've shifted the organization so we have a lot more people who are working through the channel."

In a time where economic issues are a growing concern for small business and IT spending issues loom, Bernard said margin protection and investment in demand generation will keep Novell partners in a strong position. "There's a tremendous amount of field support in helping to build their pipeline," she said. "Our intention is not just to be as good [as other vendors], but to be better."