Can you give us any specifics on how that might impact how Dell partners make money?
The objective is to be able to make it more predictable as to how you earn money, and the time of the deal. One of the complaints I've gotten is, 'Hey, it's unclear, it's all back-end-loaded, it’s post the quarter process.' Well, if we make this more predictable, make it less complex, and make it more real time, we can actually focus on, 'OK, at the end of the day, what's going to stick to my fingers by the time the deal gets done and I get my teammates to come through?' That's what's important.
And then the other part of the process of automating these things and driving the self-serve model is it takes way too long to get deal reg[istration] done, to get portals done, to get pricing in. And we all know –especially in a market that isn't growing at astronomical rates anymore—everything is extremely competitive. So time becomes of the essence. Time kills deals. So we want to make sure that cycle time of being able to put a competitive quote in front of the customer with the right intelligence to say, 'This is what it's going to take the win the deal' is at a time frame that puts us in a great position to win together.
