“Accelerate presents a whole new range of opportunities for our partners: it helps them improve their efficiency, drive new opportunities and find new customers – all at an accelerated pace,” said Peter Kelly, president, Enterprise EMEA, Nortel. “Accelerate is part of Nortel’s on-going commitment to developing programmes that address the evolving business needs of our channel partners. In recent years we have made real step changes in product innovation, and following an evaluation of our partner programme, we felt the time was right to apply that kind of fresh thinking to how we do business with our partners.”
Rob Sherbill, Channel Strategy and Support for Nortel Enterprise EMEA told Comms Business Magazine that Accelerate delivers a number of key initiatives for existing and new channel partners in key areas.
“We aim to create new sales opportunities with a dedicated SMB partner programme offering, enabling easier entry, and complete with market creation, incentives and packaged services. Additionally, via our distribution partners (Crane, Westcon etc) we are looking to recruitment and development of channel partners with a number of exciting commercial offers.”
For Nortel Gold partners (Datasharp, Central Telecom, BT etc.) there is a new rebate scheme called 20-20 which is designed to offer up to 20 points of rebate for hitting agreed sales targets.
Sherbill adds that focus in the coming year will be on customer acquisition through more flexible marketing support arrangements through integrated, high-impact programmes; and, partnership effectiveness through a new Partner Relation Management system providing partners with faster and richer access to a range of information on Nortel systems, plus enhanced training support.
Sherbill concludes, “Accelerate builds on Nortel’s existing partner programme framework, allowing its partners to continue to build on their investment in Nortel solutions accreditation and infrastructure and to work together in growing top-line revenues, expanding technology portfolio opportunities and offering margin-rich returns on that business. Accelerate also makes it easier for new partners to engage with Nortel for the first time and choose where and how we can work together best.”