New Polycom Financing Offers Working Capital to Partners

Polycom (NASDAQ: PLCM), fresh off the biggest product announcement in its 22-year history, now is backing that effort with a new financing program for channel partners that offers extended payment terms and higher credit lines for their purchases of the video collaboration vendor’s products.

With Polycom’s channel financing–underwritten by GE Capital–partners will be able to extend payment terms for 90 days, in effect enabling them to collect from their customers before having to pay for inventory. According to Polycom, longer terms and alternative financing options are also available to partners. The program is being administered through Polycom Capital and the vendor’s field sales representatives.

Polycom also has rolled out new end-user financing terms aimed at expanding SMBs’ and enterprises’ access to its RealPresence solutions and services, and unified communications and collaboration portfolio. The financing program is underwritten by Macquarie Equipment Finance and run through Polycom Capital.

End customers have three financing programs from which to choose:

Channel partners can request an end-user financing quote from Polycom Capital to present to their customers, the company said. Polycom urges channel partners to involve its financing arm early in the sales cycle.

“These new attractive financing options from Polycom Capital put unified communications and video collaboration solutions within reach of nearly any business, and we believe it will help us sell even more of the full product portfolio to our customers,” said Eric Brown, Polycom chief operating and chief financial officer.

The new financing offers are among a number of programmatic changes Polycom has made in the past few months. In July, for a second time in just two years and less than two months after rebranding itself as a software-centric provider, Polycom revamped its channel program from top to bottom.