Dell revamps PartnerDirect portal

MUMBAI, INDIA: Dell rolled out the new improved version of its PartnerDirect portal for the Indian partners today in Mumbai. It is aimed to provide partners with better site navigation and accessibility features to help them in sales, marketing and training using on line tools and resources.

According to Neeraj Singh, Dell India' head of Commercial Channel Operations, Dell's partner program was initiated about two years back, wherein partners were recruited and infrastructure was provided to tap the market opportunities. In India, Dell has around 300 partners in small and medium (SMB) space.

As part of the partner initiative, Dell had launched the PartnerDirect portal about two years back. However, when the company undertook a partner survey last year, involving advisory councils, it found some key issues concerning partners and their business.

Some of the concerns were the uneasy navigation and accessibility of PartnerDirect portal, conflicts between partners and sales teams, managing of exclusive deals and accounts and others.

To solve this, the company revamped the PartnerDirect portal as per Web2.0 standards along with that it set rules of engagement and governance policy to sort out the partners' conflicts.

“The site allows partners to get register on line, after which the partner can register his/her deal or potential business opportunity. Whatever deal or account related information posted by partner on line is easily visible to the company's sales team as well as other partners and this offers better transparency of business to partners and sales team,” Singh explained.

The revamped portal offers improved navigation, easy locating of sales and market support. The site has the feature of online configurator, wherein the partner can configure the products on line as well as get price list.

According to Dell, it's channel strategy is based on the premise of making technology more accessible to small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Globally, the company serves 10 million SMB customers and almost 50,000 registered partners of which 63 per cent are certificated partners. Channel partners contribute 22 per cent to Dell's total revenue world wide and in Asia Pacific Japan region it has over 4000 partners.