Dell EMC senior vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, Tian Beng Ng.
The time for new tiers nears for Dell EMC partners locally and around the world, as the company prepares to roll out its new partner program on 6 February.
The February launch of the new program, aimed at coinciding with the first business day of the company’s new financial year, will see its partners shifted from their existing Dell and EMC legacy partner program tiers into their respective partner rankings under the new, combined model.
A review of the new partner program was released by Dell EMC in October 2016, with the company revealing further details of its new tiered model late last year.
The new program tiers, aimed at establishing a clear path for partners to up-level, start at gold, move up to platinum, and then titanium. Some partners that make the grade while in the titanium tier may also reach the exclusive titanium black status.
The company has previously said that the new model is built on three core tenets: to be “simple, predictable, and profitable; with the new model designed to ensure partners have ample opportunity, business confidence, and profitability regardless of their program tier.
Late last year, the company told partners that it was going to implement what it refers to as a ‘status match’ policy, where if a partner is on a legacy Dell or EMC tier, it will get matched into the relevant tier under the new system.
As yet, however, partners are in the predominantly dark about which tier they will be placed into under the new program.
“Partners have been informed of the status match policy, but they have not yet been informed of which tier they’re moving to. The reason for that is that we end our Dell EMC financial year in the month of January,” Dell EMC’s channel chief across Asia Pacific and Japan, Tian Beng Ng, told ARN.
That said, most partners that Dell and EMC claimed prior to the completion of their landmark merger in September 2016 will likely have some idea of what tier they will be appointed to once the new program comes in – based on their previous partner program rankings and performance over the past year.
According to Tian Beng, one of the reasons the company wanted to wait until the beginning of its new financial year before launching the program was because it would have the opportunity to use partners’ full year performance to determine which tier they would be placed into come February.
“We’re about two weeks away from the end of January, so they [partners] still have a bit of runway,” Tian Beng said. “And in the IT world, quite a lot can happen in that last few weeks of the quarter.
“We’re tracking it closely and we’re informing our partners. We’re telling them where they are at now, so that if they need the extra push in the last two to three weeks, they can do that and ensure they qualify for their tier,” he said.
