ChannelVision Magazine

channel management “Other top complaints are incon- sistency in personnel or support (ei- ther through high channel employee turnover or waffling in and out of commitments to the channel), and, culturally speaking, failing to under- stand that both the agent and the customer are the vendor’s custom- ers,” said Sandler Partners managing partner Alan Sandler. “Partners not only speak for their customers, but they have their own businesses that come with support needs. Take care of them, and they’ll take care of you.” “Solution providers want pro- grams that are simple to understand and don’t require a lot of resources to understand,” added Global Tech- nology Distribution Council CEO Tim Curran. “In addition, they want to know that their investments with vendors are worth their efforts, i.e., they want ROI. That’s one of the reasons we developed the GTDC Distribution Industry Training cer- tificate course with Quadmark. The course covers best practices, key drivers and other channel program dynamics that can help distributors and vendors maximize the value from their partnerships.” What do partners want? “There are lots of exciting chang- es happening for the channel,” said Jo Peterson, vice president of cloud services at Clarify360 and founder of Cloud Girls. “One of the things that we’d like to see is support for lead generation and marketing that fits our business model. For instance, it’s interesting to us that some of the MDF models we see are event driven. We sell directly to end users Massive Jump in loT + Car Net-Adds Source: Cybersecurity Ventures; Gartner Partner Programs Still Important to Most Source: Canalys High Priorit Source: 451 Re $300 $200 $100 $- 2016 2016/1 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 Market Forecast Source: Computer Economic 10- critical 9 30% 0% 20% 40% Top four: 77% 18% 21% 8% 5% 6% 2% 1% 9% 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 not at all important Average score 2018: 7.7 2016: 8.2 2014: 7.8 How important are partner programs when considering or evaluating your relationship with a vendor? Please rate on a scale from 1 (not at all important) to 10 (critical) Complexity High on Complaints About Programs Source: Canalys What are your biggest complaints about partner programs? Select your top three, starting with your highest ranking choice, to your lowest ranking choice. Vendors keep changing their programs/lack of consistency Achieving certifications and specializations is too complex Improving e Q. Which of th Upgrading/retr Aligning data cent Closi Upgrading powe Outsourcing data centers Leasing ad Building or Too many partners in the program Discount/rebate programs are too complex Too much administration (forms, etc) 16% 15% 14% 11% 10% US Netadds 30% 20% 10% 0% Percent of respo Percentag Source: 451 Re 250-999 employees 1-249 employees 1,000-9,999 employees 10,000+ employees Company- or leased d Companies Are Moving to September - October, 2018 | Channel Vision 59

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTg4Njc=