Having recorded tremendous performance in last fiscal, Dell Technologies’ business is strongly supported by its global partner ecosystem. The technology giant continues to strengthen its partners, with renewed focus and ample growth opportunities. The leadership team of Dell Technologies provide a detailed outlook for 2020
Joyce Mullen, President, Global Channel, Embedded & Edge Solutions
– Dell Technologies recorded US$ 52 billion in orders over the past year. Our opportunity is enormous, our momentum is strong and our partnerships are more solid than ever. This is our year to help customers turn data into one of their most valuable assets, and it starts right now.
– We recently announced our social impact plan for this decade with specific goals around advancing sustainability, cultivating inclusion, transforming lives and upholding ethics and privacy. Together we get to aid the visually impaired through initiatives like ‘The Unseen Ballet’, protect our planet by eliminating ocean plastics and provide education to the underserved kids around the world with environmental friendly, Solar Learning Labs. We know that this is the decade of data, the decade of 5G, multi-cloud, artificial intelligence and, we wouldn’t argue, the decade of Dell Technologies.
– In this decade, our customers will learn how to put their data to work. They will make their processes even more efficient. Create safer and more environmentally friendly factories. They’ll improve their customers’ experiences, protect privacy even more diligently and they will unlock the power of their data in ways we never imagined.
– Customers need partners to help them build the foundation. They need partners who are technically proficient, partners who understand their businesses and what they are trying to accomplish. They need partners they trust, partners who have their back and partners who can offer the world’s best solutions to deliver the results they are looking for. Together, we’re doing this. Together, we’re bringing it. Solutions that enable customers, skills that simplify the complex and capabilities that encourage innovation.
– We’re investing 4.5 billion dollars annually in R&D, more than many of our competitors combined. The collaboration we have across the industry is second to none. We are bringing innovative solutions to the markets that simplify our customers’ digital futures. Some of the solutions that we launched last year were Power One, Dell Technologies Cloud, new versions of VX Rail, Unity, Data Protection Solutions and award-winning personal devices etc. Partners can bank on our portfolio and with Dell Technologies On-Demand platform, customers can buy these solutions anytime.
– We at Dell Technologies also have the industry’s best partner community. While we can’t talk about Q4 results yet, we can say that our partners delivered solid performance through Q3 with:
- Eight per cent order revenue growth
- Nine per cent distribution growth
- Eleven per cent storage growth
- Seven per cent server growth
- Over 52,000 new and reactivated customers
As we head into 2020, our commitment to partners remains strong and steady. We are continuing to raise our bar on our promise of simple, predictable, profitable. This starts with our simplified go-to-market structure. In December, we announced that our Commercial and Enterprise organizations are being combined under Bill Scannell, who will lead a new, global, unified Sales and Partner organization team.
Bill Scannell, President, Global Sales
– Dell Technologies has the portfolio strength, we have the team and we have partners to go and take massive share in FY21. We really want to take our partnerships to new heights.
– The changes we announced last quarter were really around our go-to-market. Our new combined team simplifies how our partners work with us and offer a much greater degree of consistency in how they deal with us in the field. We take simplicity and eliminate the complexity which equals to scale.
– We have an incredible portfolio wrapped around an incredible strategy. Our customers are saying they want to go the Cloud but they don’t know what that means. We need to explain the Cloud isn’t a place, it’s a way of doing IT. So when our partners get on-board with our strategy and work closely with us it’s a winning hand.
Joyce Mullen, President, Global Channel, Embedded & Edge Solutions
– Dell Technologies is introducing solutions like Power One and the Dell Technologies Cloud that incorporates IP for many of the Dell Technologies companies, it’s all about making it easier for partners to embrace and use those solutions to help solve customer problems.
– We are making sure that if a partner takes training with VMware on their cloud module for example, that counts towards the Dell Technology cloud certification and competencies.
– We are also planning our Global Partners Summit to coincide with Dell Technology World, so there will be tons of exciting content for our partners of all sizes and different business models.
– Dell Technologies is making big investments to deliver self-service tools, a simpler program and more streamlined processes. Every investment we are making this year is designed to empower our partners to serve customers better, to help them modernise their infrastructure and to deliver business outcomes faster than ever before. And in addition to our powerful partner program there’s so much more, innovation, industry leadership and the determination to be number one and help our partners serve their customers in a better way.
Jay Snyder, SVP, Global Alliances
– We used to focus on healthcare, energy and video security initially. In the past year, we’ve added retail, media entertainment, and are in the process of adding financial services. We’re investing in SME’s and developing solutions geared toward customers across all of these industries. Our business has more than doubled in the last five years.
– I can’t wait to share more details with you at GPS (Global Partner Summit). Dell Technologies’ continues to modify the Cloud Service Providers, CSP program tracks feedback from partners, with a focus on profitability. One of the biggest pieces of feedback we’ve heard is around revenue tier requirements.
– Dell Technologies has recognised that a global revenue requirement may not work in all countries and has adjusted the program revenue requirements needed for tier promotions for partners that primarily operate in smaller markets. These different revenue requirements will help provide more attainable tier advancement opportunities and benefits for these partners in smaller markets.
– Along with revenue requirements, Dell has also adjusted the rebates. However, overall program rebate percentages for platinum and titanium CSP’s remains the same, but the rebate accelerators have been removed.
– We’re also expanding the program benefits for sell-out compensation to now include deals with our authorised CSP’s. This means we’ll now be compensating our core Sales Reps on deals that involve our authorised partners, which increases collaboration with sales instead of creating competition.
– We are hoping this change will get us closer to the 50 per cent mark with regards to number of sales teams that leverage Dell Alliances in 2020 which is currently up to 30 per cent. We’ve also simplified the program in a couple of areas including, the programs point-of-sale report requirement. Instead of requiring our partners to submit a point-of-sale report each month, we’re going to send our partners an end-user validation report each month, asking them to verify the information we’ve provided
– We also continue to focus on expanding our training offerings for Cloud Service Providers, making it easier to meet training-hour requirements. This year, CSPs will have the option to earn a CSP Dell Technologies Cloud competency, which counts towards training-hour requirements and provides our Sales Reps with visibility to your specific business as a competency option for Dell Technologies Cloud Service provider opportunities. These partners will also receive a 2x accelerator on their rebates for qualified VxRail purchases.
– One of the big announcements from Dell Technologies in 2019 was the announcement of Dell Technologies Cloud and Dell Technologies on Demand. You can activate Dell Technologies On-Demand through our flexible payment solutions: Pay As You Grow, Flex on Demand and Datacentre Utility.
– At Dell Technologies, we’re committed to innovate and deliver incredible value to our customers. I can assure you Dell Global Alliances will be a key enabler of this. “Dell is an enabler, but partners will bring the transformation of our collective customers to life”
– We want to see 50 per cent of the Dell Technologies sales teams leverage what partners have to offer and I expect we will also continue to grow double digits. These goals go hand in hand. It is all about the people and cultivating innovation, which is why we believe in the Dell Technologies’ Progress Made Real 2030 plan we announced a few months ago at Dell Technologies Summit 2019. Our plan establishes ambitious moonshot goals designed to turn a vision into reality:
- By 2030, 50 per cent of our global workforce and 40 per cent of our Global people leaders will be women and 25 per cent of our US workforce, and 15 per cent of our US people leaders will be black African- American, Hispanic- Latino minorities
- We will advance health, education and economic opportunities to deliver enduring results for over a billion people
- We’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent, and we will source 75 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources at our facilities. Our product portfolio will reduce its energy intensity by 80 per cent
– We have committed to do all of this and more by the year 2030 and we want our partners to be a part of it. This year the Alliances Team will continue to hold give – back programs and social responsibility events in each region and we would like to invite our partners to join us
Darren Sullivan – SVP, Global Partner Strategy, Programs & Operations
– At Dell Technologies, we strive to deliver the best Partner Program in the industry based on our core tenets of Simple, Predictable and Profitable. These three tenets, along with our partners direct feedback from Partner Advisory Boards, Partner Summits and Satisfaction surveys, guide the evolution of the Dell Technologies Partner Program.
Our 2020 Dell Technologies Partner Program for Solution Providers will provide an even more compelling business proposition through three main focus areas:
- Increased opportunity and profitability for new customer and line of business acquisition
- A simplified structure, making it more predictable and easier to manage your Dell business
- An improved end-to-end experience accelerating the time to get to a winning price and improving the predictability of partner’s overall incentives
– For increasing opportunity and profitability, we’re investing in new business acquisition with partners, expanding our Partner Preferred Program by adding new target customers for server acquisition to the existing storage accounts. We’ve seen great momentum with this program driven by the collaboration of Dell Technologies core sales and our partners.
– Dell Technologies’ combined go-to-market structure will make engagement with partners easier and more effective. In addition to normal back-end rebates Dell Technologies also provide incremental discounting on the front end. When partners receive Deal Registration approval for server or storage opportunities with an applicable Partner Preferred account partners receive an increased discount. This advantaged pricing allows the the discretion to price with greater profitability.
– In addition, we’re continuing our New Business Incentive as a reward for bringing new customers and new lines of business to Dell. Also for Storage, we’re continuing the Competitive Swap rebate for opportunities in which you’re displacing a competitive product in an account that isn’t included on our named NBI list.
– The bottom line: Focus on the right new business targets which maximizes profitability, both through increased upfront discounts and backend rebates in the Dell Technologies Partner Program.
– Dell Technologies is consolidating product rebate structure from seven lines of business and two or three sub-categories within each line of business to three lines of business: Client, Server and Storage. We’ve also introduced base rebate multipliers on particular products to reward targeted behaviour. In addition, we’re making partners rebate attainment much more predictable.
– Starting in Q1, Dell Technologies plans to eliminate the quarterly target process as well as increasing program automation to make partner’s in-quarter earnings easier to forecast and reduce the number of adjustments required after quarter-end. For partners operating in smaller countries in EMEA, Latin America and Asia Pacific, we’re introducing five global program zones to help make tier revenue requirements more realistic and attainable.
– Our last focus area is an improved End-to-End experience. Over the past two years, we’ve made significant IT investments aimed at driving an improved online partner experience. This year, these investments will really come to life. One of the biggest project is the delivery of an Integrated Quoting Platform. Our Solutions Configurator Platform will accelerate partner’s journey to provide them with integrated quoting for Dell Technologies’ Storage, Server and Networking portfolio this year.
– We’re committed to delivering a simple, predictable and profitable partner program. These improvements announced today, continue to raise the bar in our value proposition to our partners.
Ng Tian Beng – SVP, Channel Sales APJ
– We have simplified the partner program by consolidating our product rebate structure to just three lines of business; Client, Server and Storage. We have removed quarterly targets to improve predictability while automating other processes to make it easier to forecast partner’s quarterly earnings. Our investments are in projects that will improve the end-to-end partner experience. We will further optimise quoting tools to help our partners better calculate their potential gross margin position for each product, with a fast, seamless and intuitive online experience.
– Furthermore, we have just launched a Deal Registration dashboard to distributors that make it easier to view and use opportunities directly in a partner portal. We are rolling out two more phases so that partners with Dual Registration capability will have access to this dash board as well. Complimenting predictability and simplicity, our base rebate multipliers will be on focused products to reward targeted behavior. These multipliers will cover specific products such as Precision Workstation, Rugged Notebooks, Client Peripherals, Displays, 7 and 9 series laptops for Client category and Power Edge 4-socket and Blade Servers for server category. Our focus this financial year is to provide partners with incremental benefits that will drive their pursuit of new business and reward their continued and growing engagement with us.
Basis the improved NPS calls, the top three areas of improvement are:
- Our marketing materials and customer-facing information
- Online training and cost variety and benefits for certified partners finding margins
- Opportunity for financial incentives
