Citrix Revamps Partner Incentives Program

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Citrix on Monday introduced Ultimate Rewards, a consolidated incentives program that targets partners who are entitled to buy from distribution for resale.

The Citrix Ultimate Rewards program slims down the vendor’s current five incentives programs – Citrix Advisor Rewards (CAR); CAR Plus; CAR Bonus; Citrix Opportunity Registration; and Net New Partner Source (NNPS) – into one. It’s slated to go into effect Feb. 10. Partners attending Citrix Summit this week in Anaheim, California, are learning about the new program.

Citrix’s Paul Fecteau

“Our goal is to simplify doing business with Citrix by reducing the complexity in our programs and processes, as well as to accelerate our partner’s profit in the cloud, while continuing to reward them for the on-premise[s] business that they’ve been doing with us from day one,” Paul Fecteau, managing director, partner programs and operations at Citrix, and Ultimate Rewards architect, told us.

The bottom line driving the change is to create a better partner experience.

Prior to this simplification initiative, Citrix partners registering a deal were responsible for knowing which of five incentive programs they could apply for on a given deal — that means understanding the intricacies of each. No more.

With Citrix Ultimate Rewards, new intelligent systems will help partners who register deals sort through the vendor’s incentives.

“All the partner has to do is answer a few questions about the customer and the deal itself, and the system will determine which incentive elements they qualify for,” Fecteau explained. Partners also will benefit from a speedier approval process, thanks to new automation.

Citrix Ultimate Rewards includes two discounts: Spark and Drive, and a quarterly rebate known as Accelerate. Spark lines up with NNPS, and rewards partners for identifying, registering, and selling a new opportunity. Drive is akin to what partners know as CAR, for value-selling activities, and is almost identical to current CAR activities, Fecteau said.

“The distinction between the new Drive program and old CAR program is that the CAR discount was paid in the form of a rebate, paying partners awarded the CAR regardless of if they sold the deal or another partner did. Drive is offered as a discount, and rewards partners who do value-selling activity. It’s paid as a quarterly back-end rebate. We want to honor some of the best characteristics in CAR,” he said.

Accelerate, the rebate piece of Citrix Ultimate Rewards, has two parts: Partners are rewarded for selling Citrix cloud services, and they’re rewarded for product sales growth.

Partner Central, the vendor’s partner portal, is undergoing changes to support the new partner incentives program.

The Citrix Solution Advisor program is the vendor’s reseller program.