Alcatel Consolidates North American Partner Program

By Khali Henderson

Alcatel announced in late July a new North America Business Partner Program that consolidates the product lines and resources of three previously separate channel initiatives.

The move, which was driven by technology convergence, enables Alcatel to offer its partners a greater breadth of products for delivering end-to-end solutions to customers, says Tom Eggemeier, vice president of Alcatels channel activities in North America.

We are seeing more resellers become systems integrators and selling a broader portfolio of products, says Eggemeier, citing the example of a PBX partner also selling microwave radios as T1 backup. They want to create more sticky relationships with their customers and they see the way to do that is providing more value-added services and more of a broad product portfolio.

Specifically the new program combines Alcatels channels for voice PBX, data networking and carrier solutions. Together the programs have about 125 partners, with a recruitment target of 200 by the end of the year.

Partners are encouraged to be trained and to sell across product lines. In fact, achieving the highest partner level Expert under the new program requires partners to represent multiple products lines in addition to achieving volume commitments and training certifications. The other two tiers include Authorized and Certified.

The combined staff for Alcatels new program numbers 30 and includes 15 territory channel managers each overseeing 10 to 15 partners. The remaining staff provides training, sales support, demand generation and other services to the channel.

The dedicated staff is augmented by a hundreds of Alcatels sales representatives and sales engineers. Our view is one plus one equals three because the partner is seeing a lot of value-add in us bringing deals to the table for them. And, Alcatel is seeing value add from our partners bringing deals to us also. I call it a cooperative selling model, says Eggemeier.

He says Alcatel is seeking different types of partners depending on the market segment that is being targeted be it carriers or vertical markets, such as defense and security, transport, oil and gas/utilities, health, education, financial institutions, local authorities and government.

In the enterprise segment we are looking at geographic regions for providers that are in between $5 million to $20 million in sales and can sell voice, data and carrier products. Thats a sweet spot of ours, he says. He adds the company also looks for opportunities where it can become the No. 1 or No. 2 supplier in a partners portfolio within a few years.