Lenovo revamps One Channel partner programme

Lenovo has announced the invigorated Lenovo One Channel 2014 partner programme. The programme re-emphasises the company’s ‘channel first’ strategy and focus on the SMB market as a growth engine by increasing rewards and cash flows for partners whilst adding new incremental rewards programmes for the expanding server and storage product lines. These changes further evolve Lenovo’s One Channel programme and focus on improving and simplifying processes, and increasing rewards. Lenovo has listened extensively to partner feedback to ensure the right enhancements to the programme are implemented.

Further enhancements to the Lenovo One Channel programme will follow, including two major initiatives to simplify the measurement of the channel revenues and provide a best in class quotation tool available to authorised Lenovo partners’ sales floor.

“The channel has played a critical role in our remarkable results. Our partners have helped us become the #1 PC company in the world and the second largest PC vendor in EMEA, where channel sales represent 95% of our total business,” said Gianfranco Lanci, SVP Lenovo Group and EMEA President. “We are at an exciting time as a business – we are expanding our portfolio of products in line with our PC+ ambitions and are creating new opportunities for the channel to work with us and grow their business. By continually investing in our relationship and programmes with the channel, we believe we will achieve our mid-term objective of also leading the PC+ space”.

Lenovo One Channel 2014 partner program is ruled by the following principles:
o Simplicity and predictability
- The full integration of Lenovo’s storage business will consolidate two programmes into one. The former Iomega ioclub portal and programmes will be full transitioned into the Lenovo Partner Portal and the One Channel rewards portal, and Lenovo’s tier 2 Premium partners will earn rewards for storage.
- All lines of business including servers and storage have no earning gates or minimum thresholds and pay rewards from the first sales. The only targets now existing are to drive the high growth SMB sector and are rewarded by higher incremental rebates.
- The new partner portal launched in October 2013 offers further functional and dashboard improvements to enhance usability and visibility of the earned rewards.
o Cash flow boost for the channel – Lenovo is investing further behind its Authorised Distributors by increasing the extended credit terms by 50%, to help fuel the continued channel expansion and revenue growth. To assist the tier 2 Premium partners we are simplifying programme processes such as a new e-invoicing process (where country tax laws allow), which will result in faster processing of the rebate payments. Partners will have the cash in their banks within 4 weeks of the close of the quarter.
o Generous server rewards – Lenovo is generously investing into the server and storage categories to drive growth in these markets in EMEA. Rewards are paid from the first sales with no targets or thresholds and are driven by partner business plans. Lenovo is putting those funds entirely behind partner’s own business development ideas, and the partner simply needs to agree that plan with Lenovo to unlock the incremental rebates. Also, the company is providing simple access to Lenovo’s server and storage universe without the need to revalidate technical competences and no stringent technical certification or training requirements.
o Online price quotation tool – Lenovo has undertaken a multi-million Euro IT investment in Salesforce.com in order to provide a best in class price quotation tool with a 2 hour turnaround. The new tool, which will be launched in April, is designed to provide fast quotations on products selected from the TopSeller product portfolio and give partners visibility of current inventories at their preferred distributor. One of the other features supported will be online chat, so that partners can seek advice during the bidding phase.
o Real channel revenue measurement – In the first half of 2014 Lenovo will implement a superior solution for revenue measurement in partnership with Context. Lenovo is the first major vendor to implement such a revenue scheme that will be the basis for all reporting, including partner targets, achievements and rebates payments in €. This change will give partners a more transparent view of their Lenovo business and how this translates to the rewards & incentives they will earn.

“We have a ‘channel first’ strategy in EMEA that is paying off. In 2013 we increased our channel revenues by €1.5Billion and, unlike the majority of the market, we expanded our reseller base by 16% whilst the overall channel has reduced by 9% according to Context,” said Neil Berville, Executive Director, Lenovo Channels EMEA. “This year we are re-emphasing our focus on the SMB market, by boosting rewards & cashflow for the partners and also adding new incremental rewards for Servers & storage to encourage partners to jump in early with a new emerging player”.

“Lenovo’s quality product portfolio and the enhancements to their channel partner programme, together with Tech Data’s focus and widest customer breadth in the European SMB market provide all the ingredients for continued growth and success for our resellers,” said George Uzan, Vice President PC Systems, Tech Data Europe.