CRN IMPACT Awards: Tech Data beefs up IBM business

A Tech Data campaign to drive new business netted the distie almost 50 new reseller partners over the course of 2018 and grew its IBM product group revenue by some $8 million.

With the help of two new business development managers, the company conducted more than 280 face-to-face partner recruiting meetings over 12 months and created 48 new reseller partners.

From that new influx of partners, some 83 new IBM brands were recruited, including 23 in storage, 22 in security, 16 in IBM Power, nine in analytics and IoT, seven in cloud and six in systems software.

The distie’s vision in this process was to create a new solutions ecosystem, one that focused on software-defined data centre, analytics and IoT, and security. To get this happening, Tech Data approached their partner ecosystem with a three-pronged methodology: envision, enable and execute.

The first stage of the process was consultation to evaluate partners’ existing technology solutions and how well they served the verticals they were going after.
At the enablement stage, the distie deployed sales coaching, technical training and marketing tools. At the execution stage, they made Tech Data and IBM’s sales and technical resources for end-user consultation as well as site audits, solutions architecture, implementation and post-sale services.

The distie ran a number of marketing campaigns and facilitated meetings with IBM partners and potential customers. Some of the more successful campaigns and introductions resulted in first partner-led sale of IBM Q-Radar, one of the vendor’s security analytics packages, in Western Australia, and a pairing up Aussie-based IoT specialist Urban IO with asset management software solution IBM Maximo, driving new business.

The IBM drive also saw Tech Data facilitate the introduction of the University of NSW’s head of relationships with one of IBM’s leading partners, which resulted in a thought leadership event.

The strategy, according to Tech Data, resulted in excess of $8.1 million in net new revenue across multiple IBM product groups, including five net new business partners delivering $3.26 million in IBM Storage revenues across the areas of government, communications, medical and
managed services industries.

That success of Tech Data's IBM recruitment and marketing journey constituted a year-on-year increase in its IBM hardware business of 71 percent, and year-on-year growth in its IBM software business of 39 percent. 

Tech Data is a finalist in the 'Distribution Performance' category in the 2019 CRN Impact Awards. For a list of all finalists and further details on the awards, please head to the CRN Impact Awards hub. The awards take place during the CRN Pipeline conference. You can get more information and purchase tickets here.