Lenovo Accelerate 2014: Business is Good, Let’s Make it Better

Lenovo kicked off its 2014 Accelerate partner conference in Orlando, Florida, with a one-two punch of positive growth numbers and channel growth statistics, showing just how far the PC and more vendor has come in the last 12 months.

“Our growth is up 65 percent year over year. Our server business has increased 67 percent year over year. Our SMB is up 35 percent, and the number of new and engaged partners is 3,200 this year,” said Sammy Kinlaw, Lenovo’s executive director of Channel Sales. “We are No. 1 in sales, No. 2 in the PC plus space and No. 3 in sales of smart connected devices,” no small feat considering Lenovo doesn’t even offer smart devices in the North American market.

But as much as the company has grown—and, by all accounts, will keep growing once its acquisition of IBM’s x86 server business is completed and its server line effectively doubles—Lenovo is setting its sights on going even higher.

In fact, in laying out Lenovo’s five priorities for 2014, North America President Jay Parker emphasized the need to keep things moving with some sense of urgency.

“Our focus remains growth,” he said. “We are acquiring new customers every day, and we’re doing that through our channel partners.”

The five priorities Parker listed were:

Of the emphasis on servers and services, Parker noted both are areas of opportunity for Lenovo and its channel partners. “We are selling ThinkServers. As we go through the acquisition and we’re waiting for it to close, it’s not a time for us to take a breath and sit back and wait for the integration [of the two lines]. We growing in it, investing in it and spending time, energy and focus on it.

“The services side is growing but it’s one we leverage our partner community to execute. As hardware sales stay flat, services as a business is one we can do together,” he added. “We are outsourcing a good part of our services to our partners and that is only going to grow.”

Chris Frey, vice president North America Commercial Channels and SMB, then demonstrated the power of Lenovo’s channel partners. “Three years ago we sat down and put together an aspiration plan, which frankly I didn’t think we’d reach,” he said. “That plan was to reach $3 billion by fiscal year 2013/2014 with 8,000 active partners. We surpassed that and some: We actually now have 10,000 partners and did more than $4 billion.”

Now, he said, Lenovo wants to continue to set itself apart from other vendors’ channel dealings.

“We don’t want to do it like everybody else. This is about differentiating ourselves in the market,” he said. “We don’t want to be slowed down, but we want you to be so good you can do it yourself.”

The company didn’t announce any changes to its SMB Partner Advantage program, but Frey did announce additional “Combat Kits” — rolling cases with different technologies channel partners can use to demonstrate. Last year saw the first Combat Kit, which includes the X1 Carbon, Helix, Tablet 2 and Twist machines, and Frey said had 2,000 1:1 impressions, or uses by channel partners.

The newest available Combat Kit is the ThinkServer kit, which includes the ThinkServer RD540 and T440s. In its few months of availability, it has had 400+ 1:1 impressions, Frey said.

This month, Lenovo plans to offer an Education Combat Kit, consisting of X140e, x131e and the M93p (Tiny), all technologies ideal for the K-12 space, Frey said.

“We think K-12 school districts have budgets but they aren’t looking at they best quality product for the children,” he said. “We are not in the business of selling the cheapest thing in the market because that will dilute the experience over time. We have the best product for K-12.”

Frey noted Lenovo’s battle plan for the coming year is once again to drive SMB, small enterprise and education sales with its channel partners. If the last year is any indication of its possible successes, I’d be willing to throw down a wager it succeeds.