Unified communications vendor Siemens Enterprise Communications Group has a lofty — but intrepid — goal to bring in 75 percent of its revenue through the channel within three years, up from 15 percent today.
“This move is the linchpin of a core strategic shift, and it’s an edict from above,” said Mike Garland, senior vice president of North American alliances and channels for Siemens, who was brought in specifically to head up the channel effort in the United States. “When the Gores Group created the joint venture with Siemens AG last October, the executive team made a decision that the best way to grow would be to take a channel-centric approach.”
He added that Siemens needs to scale its business to capture as much market opportunity as possible for its unified communications portfolio, a segment where the leader is Cisco Systems Inc. and its legion of VARs and resellers. It wants to go after enterprises as well, not just SMBs. “Enabling other people to sell your products is how you can scale cost-effectively,” he said. “There are costs in building a channel program, but they’re different costs from what it would take to hire up as many people as you need to directly.”
Structuring the Program. Accordingly, Siemens is looking to a two-tier model, in which SYNNEX Corp. is its first distributor. Garland said he and his team are sifting through SYNNEX’s network of 15,000 resellers to tap into the partners that make the most sense for the Siemens IP-centric product set. The gearmaker also is looking to sign up fresh VARs under SYNNEX, while Siemens’ stable of mature partners will continue to deal directly.
Unsurprisingly, the ideal new Siemens partner is someone that can build services offerings around UC and already has a converged business. “Fluency with both voice and data in one is an important component,” Garland said. “We’re realistic that not everyone is at that point, but it’s great if they have enough of a value prop where we’re certain they can take these products and get up to speed. Or if they’re promising enough, we’ll do some heavy lifting to help them sell until they’re ready.”
While he didn’t go into specifics, Garland said he’s “sensitive to the fact that our partners need to make good margin. We also have an added financial incentive to join the program earlier rather than later.”
Compensation is also tied to the “Go Forward” program, which provides different discounts based on the level of certification they earn through Siemens training. “It takes a little investment to become competent in the product,” said Garland. “And those that are promising, that we fully expect will make that investment—we’ll give them a pre-certification access to discounts.”
Support Side. In addition to fine tuning the SYNNEX list to uncover the right reseller candidates, Garland is building the program to make it as “easy as possible” for resellers to do business with the UC specialist, including back-office and marketing support.
