Last fall Samsung Telecommunications America LLC decided to shake things up at its Business Communications Systems division by bringing in new leadership. The company tapped a Nortel, Verizon and NEC alum, Doug Wonson, as its vice president and general manager. Since BCS is 100 percent channel focused, Wonson also is heading up the company's channel strategy. Already, he has instituted a new structure and invested $4.7 million in other partner-enablement initiatives, such as doubling the support staff, lead-generation tools, financial packaging and new products to help Samsung's indirect sales partners target the small and medium business market. PHONE+ spoke to Wonson in early April about the changes in the BCS channel. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview.
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| Samsung BCS Channel Chief Doug Wonson |
How does your experience at Nortel and NEC inform what you are doing at Samsung?
I have a pretty extensive history in the business development area in the channel between NEC and Nortel and, quite frankly, I think it helps in terms of the business model and in terms of trying to meet the particular needs. Our main goal is to provide the best professional service and support organizations we can with local touch point. Those local touch points are focused on the SMBs throughout the United States and Canada. It’s apparent that customers want that choice and our objective is to provide that for them.
We have made significant investments this year — $4.7 million to be exact — to strengthen and double our support in the channel from a resource management perspective, to provide our folks lead generation with full CRM tools. We’ve brought together financial solutions and financial partners and other partners to begin to bridge and to build the things that are necessary for a complete office automation suite for the client.
What do you mean?
We’ve brought a company to providence capital to the table. We are providing financial solutions in the areas of, for example, 0 percent financing for 24 months. We are also looking at a range of solutions beyond the straight lease-purchase arrangement. We are looking at managed or hosted solutions.
That’s interesting. Is there anything on the table yet?
We are getting close. The goal here is to provide the SMB with a positive experience. This is a group that is quite large; it’s a $7 billion market. They have all the needs of the enterprise space, but they’d like to get it at a price tag that’s more affordable and that they can use to their advantage in the competition they are in.
Will it be this year or 2010?
We are hoping to make that a 2009 initiative. Our main goal is to level the playing field for SMBs by making enterprise telephony more accessible and more affordable.
