Gateway To Expand Channel Sales Efforts

Gateway, the one-time direct-sales PC maker that began selling to government accounts through the channel, will now expand its indirect sales to cover a greater number of commercial accounts.

Tom Tuttle, senior director of strategic alliances at Gateway, said the Irvine, Calif.-based company will seek to build off momentum with its tablet, notebook and all-in-one desktop products, as well as target specific opportunities in verticals such as health care -- all working with channel partners in an effort to boost sales.

Though Gateway has had some fits and starts in trying to add market share in the face of aggressive competitors, its professional business segment -- which has worked the closest with VARs -- has seen brisker growth than other segments in recent quarters.

"We felt tremendous success there," Tuttle said. "As I take over the indirect channel, [the plan] is to move that over to our commercial business as well, with a segmented approach where we feel we can address the need of our commercial, indirect clients. We really are trying to take the lessons we learned [with indirect government sales] and definitely are trying to be very deep and broaden those relationships."

The moves come under the new leadership of Gateway CEO Ed Coleman, a former channel executive and one-time chairman and CEO of corporate reseller CompuCom of Dallas. They also come after an injection of new leadership on Gateway's board, where new directors have stressed a three-pronged strategy -- direct sales, retail sales and commercial channel sales -- as a successful growth route.

A jumping off point for the expansive channel strategy, Tuttle said, will likely be in Gateway's health-care sales.

"We've had a number of health-care indirect partners who we're reaching out to and saying, 'Let's look at how we can establish a relationship where we're providing just hardware or bundled solutions in the health-care space that they can take to their end users," he said.

Over the past year, some of Gateway's channel partners have begun talking about strides the vendor has made toward a more solution provider-friendly set of engagement rules.

Mike Curtis, vice president of Virtual PCs-Office World, a Toledo, Ohio-based solution provider and Gateway ProNet partner, said the trend for the PC vendor has been positive and has gained velocity of late.

"In the past, we were bumped out of some opportunities," Curtis said. "We weren't able to call on education, some of the enterprise accounts." But he said Gateway has worked to remove barriers for partners and has already signaled an intention to open up previously off-limits accounts.

"In the past two years, there has been a pretty nice transition -- specifically, in the past 12 months, to allow us to start working with their field reps in all the individual [market] categories," Curtis said. "It doesn't matter what the arena is. It's a program that gives us the capability to bring our expertise, as a solution provider, locally. That's a pretty major difference."

Chris Prince, business manager for Netsys+, a Sioux City, Iowa, solution provider and Gateway partner, said Gateway has provided strong service and support. Prince said the company's hardware for thin-client or terminal systems in health-care accounts, as well as its tablet PCs, has been well-received by Netsys+ customers, which include more than 30 medical clinics.

"More and more, the health-care providers with electronics are going to a terminal server environment," Prince said. "Gateway also has a tablet. They've got all the pieces, and that's what clinics are looking for: portability and thin clients."

Prince said Gateway has been a profitable partner, and Netsys+ sees growing opportunities in other health-care accounts, such as hospitals.

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