Synnex Asks For Partner Help To Grow Varnex Community

Synnex's Varnex SMB partner community wants to grow its membership, and is looking forward to Synnex adding an additional $100 million in margins to its Varnex partners through the next year and a half.

Bob Stegner, Synnex's senior vice president of North American marketing and the distributor's top cheerleader for its Varnex community, told Varnex members that the organization, which currently has 275 solution provider members, wants to expand to 350 members.

Speaking at the annual Varnex Fall conference, held this week in Las Vegas, Stegner said that Synnex's decision to add $100 million in incremental margins to Varnex members by April of 2013 is a specific, measurable indicator of the distributor's commitment to the community.

"'Some' is not a number," he said. "'Soon' is not a time."

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Recruiting of new Varnex members will be focused on geographical areas where there are currently no member partners, Stegner said. He encouraged current Varnex members to go through their list of peer contacts to nominate partners they feel would contribute to the community.

Size or revenue of prospective partners is not as important as their ability to contribute to helping their fellow members grow their overall business, Stegner said.

"Someone that does $50,000 in rural Louisiana is just as important as some who does $3 million to $4 million in New York City," he said. "You have to look at it in relative terms."

Synnex is looking for partners who will participate in the organization across multiple verticals to help their fellow Varnex members, Stegner said. "If they don't participate, they don't get anything out of it," he said.

Kevin Murai, president and CEO of Synnex, said that the ability to work with other partners for the benefit of all is a key to the success of Varnex.

"Your customers are going to require more and more of you," Murai said. "And your capabilities may not be enough on your own... You will be able to provide those capabilities by partnering with each other."

Varnex members, new and old, will continue to have priority access to Synnex programs, especially as they are initially rolled out, Stegner said.

For instance, all Synnex solution providers have access to such programs as RENEWSolv, the distributor's online portal for keeping track of software licensing, warranty renewals, and subscription-based SaaS products from multiple vendors including Hewlett Packard, Symantec, and Microsoft. RENEWSolv also tracks all of a customer's hardware and software assets, opening the door for other sales opportunities.

However, Stegner said, Varnex members will have access to a new "Concierge Desk" which aims to get partners quickly trained and set up for such platforms as RENEWSolv and its new CLOUDSolv cloud platform.

Synnex is also preparing for its launch early next of OneIT, a single, integrated back office system between the distributor and solution providers to create more efficiencies in the channel, Stegner said.

Since OneIT is a cloud-hosted program for solution providers, partners will have to be on Synnex's CLOUDSolv platform in order to take advantage of it, Stegner said.

Synnex is looking to help increase the business performance of its Varnex members in three primary areas, Stegner said.

The first, Stegner said, is to help partners increase margins by helping them cut expenses and increase operating efficiency with new programs and business platforms such as RENEWSolv and CLOUDSolv.

This is a big change from five or six years ago when the focus was on decreasing prices to increase margins, Stegner said. "If we're talking nickels and dimes, we're going the wrong way," he said.

Next: Investing In Solutions

The second is to increase partners' revenue growth by increasing their sales effectiveness and adding high-priority solutions, especially from new vendors with new profitable solutions, Stegner said.

The third is protection of partners as they adapt to shifts in demands and business models, he said. "No one can shift as fast as VARs," he said.

Paul Whalley, vice president of Whalley Computer Associates, a Southwick, Mass.-based solution provider and Varnex member, said Synnex has done a good job of investing in Varnex and helping them understand growth areas and what solution providers need to take advantage of them.

Whalley, who until recently was president of the Varnex organization, pointed to Synnex's PRINTSolv managed print platform as an example of the distributor's investment in its partners.

"Without PRINTSolv, I wouldn't be able to walk into a customer and tell them the cost per page for printing," he said. "But Synnex has the tools. Just key in the customer's information, and get the price. How many resellers do you know who can quote on a per-page basis? Copier resellers know. But IT partners don't have the three years we need to get that knowledge."