The Perfect Partner

In football, it's known as "gelling." It's that moment when two impact players get so in synch that they perform as one--with almost subliminal communication--in pursuit of a common goal.

Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison gel. The Indianapolis Colts duo has recorded more completions, yards and touchdowns than any other QB-wideout

combo in history. So what makes the pair's partnership so successful, and how can vendors apply the gelling concept to their VAR interactions?

Clearly, things work best when both performers bring value of their own, but there have been equally talented athletes on the field who together haven't achieved the same level of success as a Manning-Harrison battery. Hard work deserves some of the credit, as does communication.

But if Manning and Harrison do one thing better than any other pair--one thing that businesses should take note of--it's their demonstration time and time again that they're team players, consistently putting their personal motivations aside to ensure a victory for the entire team.

While there may be no such thing as the perfect partner, it's that selfless behavior that results in some partnerships standing out above the rest.

The 2006 VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) takes an in-depth look inside the IT vendors that come closest to being the perfect channel partners.

First and foremost, a vendor must possess the talent to produce quality products, but also essential are good communication, hard work and investment in improving all facets of channel sales, and a commitment to viewing the channel as an essential part of the team in the long run, not just when it serves the vendor's immediate interests.

NEXT: So, which vendor comes closest to being the IT channel's Peyton Manning?

That vendor is Samsung.

While no VAR was willing to crown Samsung, or any other IT vendor, the "perfect partner," solution providers did reveal why Samsung has remained at the top of the pack for several years running.

For starters, Samsung makes solid products: The vendor also brought home the bacon in Product Innovation, with top scores among its peers in product quality/reliability, richness of features/functionality, technical innovation, and compatibility and ease of integration. In addition to steadily improving standard display features such as LCD refresh rates, contrast ratios and screen sizes, Samsung is also innovating in other areas to help resellers offer more value-added solutions on top of hardware.

Samsung's new 40-inch SyncMaster 400PXn and 46-inch SyncMaster 460PXn, aimed at the expanding digital-signage market, run Windows XP Embedded and allow users to remotely control content over a network through Samsung's MagicNet software.

But it doesn't matter how good a vendor's product is if a solution provider can't get it when it needs it. This is an area where Samsung excels; partners say the vendor consistently supplies products as needed and provides them with accurate, reliable, timely information when it can't get partners products in time.

"The supply-chain process they have is excellent. If they're constrained on something, you know they are; they don't say it will be here 'any day,'" says Chandran Rajaratnam, senior vice president of operations at ASAP Software, a VAR in Buffalo Grove, Ill. "They're very quick to say 'that's constrained,' or 'this isn't in stock.' On the other side, they do a very good job of keeping things in stock."

In addition, partners say Samsung has made the extra effort to help them meet their customers' needs in a pinch.

"When we were dealing with high volume a few years ago, they were just amazing. My replacements were immediate," says Jeanene Arrington, operations manager at Broadsource Technologies, a computer consulting firm in Tampa, Fla.

Sometimes special requests mean more than just supplying large quantities of product in short order, as is the case with Westwood Computer, a solution provider for the U.S. federal government that's finding it increasingly difficult to provide products that are trade-compliant.

"To help us win some large opportunities with the federal government, Samsung switched some manufacturing points to trade-compliant countries for some of their displays," says David Singer, spokesman for Westwood Computer in Springfield, N.J. "More and more of the products are manufactured in China and Taiwan, but in order to win some large business, they've done special production in Mexico."

One reason Samsung is able to meet many of these requests is because it makes a strong effort to communicate frequently with its partners, VARs say.

"We get quite a bit of communication from them. I know whom to talk with to get the ball rolling," says Fred McGill, an IT buyer for Site Services, a Midland, Mich.-based solution provider. "For me, the perfect partner provides me with one point of contact, and that's the person I deal with. That's the most frustrating thing, like with HP and some of the other larger partners. I don't need someone versed in everything, just one person I can talk to, and they can follow up so I'm not out there searching for information."

NEXT: Another way Samsung is better serving its partners.

To help better serve the channel, Samsung has realigned its inside and field-sales teams. It now has two: a demand-generation group to drum up demand among end users, and a reseller sales-management group to engage with VARs and link them up with the demand-generation team when applicable, says Christopher Franey, vice president of commercial sales and marketing at Samsung's IT division. Also this year, the vendor increased its channel-focused headcount by 75 percent, Franey says. These efforts are not going unnoticed by partners.

"They have a strong local sales team, unlike those companies that have a toll-free support line, where you never know whom you're talking to from one month to another," Singer says. "With Samsung, we know who our local sales rep is, and that rep knows our sales team."

In addition to direct contact through outbound calls, Samsung also stays in touch with partners through newsletters and its portal, which the vendor uses as a tool to automate tedious tasks, such as ordering demo units.

Also scoring highly on the report card is Samsung's Power Partner Program, which the vendor has beefed up in the past year with new financial incentives to help partners make more money and new processes to help partners get paid more quickly--by shrinking what was formerly a 10-to-16-week process down to four to six weeks.

"How they handle promotions and specs is more ahead of the game than the other vendors, as far as the ease of applying for them and getting [incentives]," McGill says.

Adds Singer: "One way they've been very creative is in working with us on other programs to help us grow their business, and providing MDF and incentive programs for their sales reps."

But perhaps the most encouraging sign from Samsung wasn't its recognition of what it's done well, but its admission to what it can do better. The company concedes that being a good partner involves increasing investment and hard work.

And if Samsung was the Peyton Manning of this year's ARC in Partnership, then Ricoh could be considered rising star Carson Palmer. In its ARC debut, the vendor made waves in the network color-printer market by outranking channel veterans HP, Lexmark and Xerox.

Notably, Ricoh unseated Xerox, which has swept Partnership in the Peripherals category for four years running but struggled in a few areas this year, such as managing channel conflict.

NEXT: Partner-slip: What's Lenovo doing wrong?

Lenovo's Partner-Slip

What a difference a year can make. When the 2005 VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) results were announced last year, Lenovo was at the head of its class, with higher marks in nearly all channel-friendliness criteria than rivals Hewlett-Packard, Gateway and Toshiba. At the time, the PC-maker was riding high on the success of initiatives implemented by IBM, which had won or tied for first place in the Mobile Computers category since 2003.

But as Lenovo has distanced itself from IBM and sought to establish its own channel identity, the company has plummeted from first to last place in the ARC, dragged down by low scores in Partnership and Support. Lenovo scored a 59 in Partnership, compared with Toshiba's 68 and HP's 65. It also earned a 60 in support, compared with the 68 scored by Toshiba and HP.

While Lenovo's total score of 67 was only 1 point below its winning score the year before--a 68--its lackluster performance came at a time when its rivals were picking up the slack. HP improved 7 points to 73, Gateway was up 9 points to 69, and Toshiba soared 11 points to tie with HP's score of 73.

While Lenovo adamantly maintains that it's committed to growing its channel business, Lenovo's partners report a lack of responsiveness and support from the PC-maker, and question whether the vendor is more focused on direct sales or on opportunities outside the U.S. market.

Take, for example, solution provider Future Tech Enterprise, which in 2004 opened the doors to a $2 million IBM ThinkVantage Technology Solutions Center in Holbrook, N.Y. Future Tech's efforts to develop solutions around IBM technologies spurred it to win IBM's Stellar Award in 2005, an honor the vendor reserves for its top U.S. business partners.

But today, Future Tech is disgruntled with Lenovo's channel efforts and technological innovation, and is increasingly looking to HP and Toshiba.

"Lenovo really needs to define to the channel what it wants to be when it grows up, because to a lot of us partners it's unclear. And it's unclear to a lot of customers too," says Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech. "Verbally, they've made it clear, but their actions haven't. They say, 'yes, we're a channel company,' but yet they're working into other routes, like Best Buy."

Lenovo got its worst ARC score for its ability to manage channel conflict. But Lenovo executives say the vendor is committed to "managing a consistent and predictable hybrid model," and that it has a defined parity process in place to address conflicts when they arise.

"Clearly, what we're trying to do is [make it so that] anything we do direct is not in conflict with our partners. There will be times when there will be some conflict, but we're committed to quickly addressing those," says Steve Mungall, vice president of channel and transaction sales strategy at Lenovo.

The PC-maker expects to sell more units through the channel than through direct sales in the third quarter of 2006, Mungall says.

Partners also cited a lack of responsiveness and support from the vendor.

"It doesn't seem as if they're making an effort," says Jeff Kowalski, vice president of sales at South Seas, a solution provider based in Englewood, Colo. "They tell you they are, but we don't see it."