2010 Partner Program Guide: Guiding Light
6:05 PM EST Wed. Mar. 31, 2010
The 5-Star vendor programs offer more support -- sometimes significantly more -- than vendors overall. Nearly all 5-Star vendors (98.2 percent) provide MDFs compared to 89.0 percent of all vendors, for example. Deal registration is provided by 86.2 percent of 5-Star vendor programs in contrast to only 78.6 percent of all vendors. Take 5-Star winner AMD, which has been revamping its Fusion Partner Program.
"We've had a great reception to that," said David Kenyon, vice president of worldwide channels for the company. On the component side, for example, AMD has stepped up its program to provide its 30,000 partners with samples of new products.
More recently, the company launched Fusion program tracks for commercial and software partners, including rolling out a global portal for partners with technical support, product information, and tools for reporting sales and tracking available market development funds. "The challenge is how you get out to the smaller partners in the far-flung parts of the world," Kenyon said.
Cisco, also a 5-Star vendor, launched a number of initiatives last June designed to help its legions of resellers get through the tough economic times. The company extended its channel financing terms from 60 days to 90, for example, and began a new program to make it easier for partners to offer managed services. It also enhanced its Value Incentive Program to reward resellers for selling not just advanced technologies, as had been the case with the VIP, but for selling more mainstream products like routing, switching and storage networking systems.
Vendors are catching on to the fact that value-added services developed around their products by solution providers are increasingly important.The application asked vendors how much in added services customers buy for every dollar of product sold.While more than 55 percent said the services attach rate was $3 or less, the percentage of vendors putting the rate between $4 and $10 increased to 14.3 percent from 9.9 percent in 2009. And those putting the attach rate at more than $10 grew to 6.0 percent from 3.3 percent last year. In addition to detailing what vendors have to offer channel partners, the statistics generated by the applications help paint a picture of the current state of vendor-solution provider relations -- the good and the bad.
Next: Vendors Offer Discounts For Registered Deals
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