QlikTech Revamps Partner Program, Offers New Margin Bonuses

This week at its partner conference in Miami Beach QlikTech also unveiled a number of enhancements to its Qonnect solution provider program, including expanded training options for partners and additional marketing resources.

"Our partners see a huge business potential before them and our goal is to make them more successful," said Christof Majer, director of alliances for the Radnor, Penn.-based software company, in an interview.

QlikTech markets the QlikView business intelligence software with analytics and search capabilities.

Fifty-six percent of QlikTech's license sales worldwide in 2010 were channel partner deals, Majer said, although that number in North America has been below 50 percent. Majer said the company expects channel sales to account for half of North America sales within the next one to two years and around 60 percent globally.

"In North America, this is where we see a lot of growth potential for our partners," Majer said.

"They're one of the most impressive companies I've worked with, from a partner perspective," said Ranjan Sinha, vice president of sales and delivery at Axis Group, a Berkeley Heights, N.J.-based business intelligence consulting service and solution provider. While Axis has worked with business intelligence products from a wide range of vendors, the company now works almost exclusively with QlikTech.

Sinha praised the revamped Qonnect program for providing clear guidelines for how partners can work with the vendor and the benefits they can receive by following the rules. "It's a great process," he said.

QlikTech is lowering the base margin it offers partners from 40 percent to 33 percent. But it's adding a number of bonus margins that "Elite" partners can earn to boost the total margin to as high as 51 percent, Majer said. That includes 7 percent for registered deals, 7 percent for SMB sales, and 4 percent for specific regional promotions.

"We want to have a good coverage model," Majer said, noting that QlikTech is aiming to leverage its channel partners to improve coverage across more industries, geographies and areas of technical expertise. "We see that as a competitive advantage for us," he said.

QlikTech is also clearly delineating the sales boundary between its partners and its direct sales. Partners will handle sales to SMB accounts -- organizations with 5,000 or fewer employees -- while the company will sell directly to named accounts with more than 5,000 employees, Majer said.

QlikTech is beefing up other elements of the Qonnect program, including offering new classroom and online self-service training courses, and marketing assistance such as funding 50 percent of the cost of preparing case-study literature for partners.