Roy Ng, Director of Asia Pacific Channel, Lenovo has taken on responsibility for the channel business across all segments of the Lenovo’s PC and smart devices business (PCSD) in the region. Speaking exclusively to CRN India, Roy talks about its new global partner framework Lenovo 360
CRN India: What are some of the key initiatives taken by Lenovo to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic for channel partners?
Roy Ng: Lenovo pursues a channel-first strategy, and this means collaboration and flexibility to all of our channel partners. During the pandemic, we have worked closely with our channel partners to ensure we are finding the right way of working together despite the volatile environment. Additionally, as the pandemic has accelerated the customer demand for services, we have been working closely with our channel partners to help create new opportunities for growth by expanding our services offerings.
CRN India: There has been a lot of push from Lenovo towards delivering its full portfolio as a service. What are the opportunities for the channel?
Roy Ng: India is leading the charge in services growth in Asia Pacific. According to IDC, the Indian I.T. and Services market grew at 7% in the first half of 2021 compared to the same period in the previous year. These further underscores our effort to provide comprehensive I.T. services and solutions.
The area of solutions and services represent huge opportunities for channel partners in India. To realize these opportunities, partners will need to find new ways to expand their existing portfolio and adapt to customer needs – Lenovo 360 offers channel partners the flexibility and breadth of resources to sell across products and services to do just that.
CRN India: What are some of the new skill sets that are required for partners to develop everything as a service focused solution?
Roy Ng: Lenovo operates with a channel-first approach, encouraging partners to participate across the I.T. value chain from devices, infrastructure to services. The new global framework Lenovo 360 will equip channel partners with resources and tools to grow their business and increase their earning potential. Channel partners will have access to global experts in as-a-Service and subject matter experts to build vertical-based solutions. Our programs will help partners sell or up-sell solutions and services.
Through the new framework, partners will be able to sell and customise solutions with Lenovo’s consolidated as-a-Service offerings under the TruScale brand. We’ll have experts who will work with our partners on building a complimentary service delivery model via the Lenovo 360 ecosystem.
In India, partners can already start to sell as-a-service solutions, such as Device-as-a-service. We intend to add more tools over time to help partners sell more as-a-service offerings.
CRN India: As head of partner sales for Lenovo, what are your key priorities?
Roy Ng: While infrastructure and services are rapidly growing areas of our business, devices and hardware will remain a focus. Hence, our key priority is to ensure a seamless engagement for all our channel partners and make it easy for them to sell across the entire Lenovo portfolio to meet specific customer needs, be it in providing devices, infrastructure or services. We have partners who currently sell only one component of the Lenovo portfolio like traditional hardware or infrastructure, and we see opportunity to sell attached services and help them tap into the growing opportunities in the services market.
To do this, we are introducing Lenovo 360, a framework designed to help partners unleash their full potential to grow their business and go deeper in their customer engagement. Reinforcing Lenovo’s channel-first strategy, we are building the channel of the future with Lenovo 360 by moving away from traditional features and cost drivers, and towards a solutions-based approach.
CRN India: What are some of the top three channel directions that partners should focus on?
Roy Ng : Solutions and services will continue to be growth drivers in India. According to Gartner’s latest forecast I.T. spending in India is projected to reach $101.8 billion in 2022, an increase of 7% from this year. Lenovo 360 puts channel partners in the strongest position to address market trends and meet their customers’ needs. Our most successful partners are those who have been able to diversify their portfolio fast so they’re not strictly selling purely devices or infrastructure.
The as-a-service market is growing rapidly in India. IDC recently reported that the India’s public cloud services market is expected to reach $10.8 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 24.1%. With increasing demand driven for work from home setups, more customers are moving into a hybrid cloud environment and will need guidance in navigating its growing complexity. We are addressing these by consolidating our ‘as-a-service’ offerings under the Lenovo TruScale brand which will allow businesses of all sizes to customise I.T. solutions through Lenovo’s full portfolio of services and products.
ESG-related services: Demand for ESG-related initiatives is growing rapidly as more customers are interested in setting and achieving their own ESG goals, and they are seeking services that can help them track and measure their progress. We’ve added tools to Lenovo 360 to help partners sell ESG-related services such as carbon offsetting programs, which enable customers to track their carbon footprint accurately and drive their sustainability goals. Channel partners can also turn to our asset recovery service, an end-to-end solution to manage the disposal of old devices and data.
CRN India: Could you explain how the Lenovo 360 partner program is different from the previous partner programs? Can you give us broad level changes that are being made to enable partners to maximise their time, people, and resources?
Roy Ng: Lenovo 360 will enhance existing programs and roll out new programs to help partners increase their earning potential and tap into Lenovo’s global breadth of resources and flexibility for I.T. solutions that fit their business and customer needs.
People: Through Lenovo 360 we present a unified channel team where the partners only need to engage with a single point of contact from Lenovo for all their I.T. needs. This frees up their time so they can spend time to focus on increasing their business capacity and working on more strategic workstreams. Lenovo 360 also provides access to global experts and subject matter experts, for example in healthcare, education, retail and also in ESG (environment, social, governance).
Programs: We will roll out new programs to help partners increase their earning potential. Our programs will not disrupt our partners’ business but instead offer them flexibility to grow their business – they can retain their current setup or expand their business by selling the entire Lenovo portfolio. We’re also creating programs that allows us to collaborate more closely with partners in this growing area, while enabling their ESG efforts.
Tools: Last year, we launched our upgraded Lenovo Partner Hub. We will continue enhancing these tools to help partners drive higher efficiency and shorten the time needed to configure, quote, and price across our portfolio.
