Eaton Partner Awards celebrate record growth

Eaton Partner Awards 2022 have celebrated year on year, double digit growth by its IT channel partners, distributors and wholesalers, fuelled by growing demand for critical power and digital infrastructure.

Eaton and its partners benefited from a surge in demand for the deployment, management and monitoring of UPS systems. The global data centre UPS market grew steadily in 2021, according to a ResearchAndMarkets.com report. The report attributes the trend to the pandemic, increased digitalisation and greater use of cloud and other technologies. It also points to edge data centres and self-built hyperscale data centres as big drivers of UPS sales globally.

In Australia, Eaton’s leading electrical reseller partners profited most from industrial sector growth in the past year, in such industries as utilities and manufacturing, alongside strong operational spend in the mining sector, particularly in Far North Queensland and Western Australia. Between 2020 and 2021, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals all opened new large-scale mines and Eaton leads the way in providing bespoke engineered solutions for these ‘safety first’ environments.”

For IT resellers, the healthcare and education sectors generated the strongest growth in UPS sales as businesses, schools and hospitals pivoted in response to COVID and sought to mitigate the risk of costly down time. When face-to-face interactions are not an option, a reliable power supply is vital.

Crucial to Eaton’s UPS business are the IT infrastructure refreshes taking place as companies embark on digital transformation journeys. Eaton’s highly agile Authorised, Approved and Certified channel partners are increasingly piggy backing off this IT capital expenditure.

The award-winners

Eaton Partner Awards highlight the breadth of its market and sales channels – from enterprise to small and medium businesses, mid-market partners, electrical wholesalers and electrical specialists.

“Each Eaton award winner has a clear competitive advantage,” observes Eaton Power Quality national sales manager, Gavin Swadling. “In the case of Approved Channel Partner of the Year MWave, it’s its ecommerce platform. With Authorised Channel Partner of the Year Computer Alliance, it’s how the business balances high volume online sales with a solution-based offering that focuses on enterprise products.”

Computer Alliance BDM, Maritsa Pavone, was crowned Channel Champion of the Year (Partner) in recognition of her 20-year commitment to delivering complex power solutions and driving joint revenue growth.

“I feel honoured to be recognised as Eaton’s Channel Champion for 2022,” says Pavone. “I’m passionate about providing my customers with solutions that ensure business continuity and offer peace of mind. Working closely with a trusted brand like Eaton allows me to design solutions that are reliable and cost effective. Eaton’s expertise and technical support, along with exemplary account management, is exactly what we value.”

Eaton also announced the inaugural recipient of a new Services Partner award inspired by the evolution of dynamic services contracts. Natural Power Solutions won the award for providing bespoke power protection solutions that span the design and installation of critical infrastructure through to preventative maintenance and servicing.

In the past twelve months, Eaton’s channel partners have embraced the company’s Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) Brightlayer software to deliver customers business continuity and automation services. IPM enables users to monitor, manage and control UPS systems, and also keep IT devices running during a power or environmental event.

“There’s intense pressure on businesses to be ‘always on’,” explains Swadling. “IPM manages all network connected infrastructure devices, triggers virtual machine migration plans and shuts down non-essential devices to keep businesses running during power and environmental events such as the current floods.”

Eaton also congratulated Distributor of the Year Bluechip Infotech for delivering the latest IT products to a wide channel base while maintaining a dedicated commitment to “first class service” provided from offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

The Eaton 2022 PowerAdvantage Partner Programme Awards winners

Knowledge is power

Swadling attributes the success of Eaton’s PowerAdvantage programme to close collaboration and education. He points to the investment Eaton has made in a self-paced online learning platform so that its partners’ sales teams – most of whom are hybrid workers – can undertake training in their own time.

“All of our partners run great businesses, but our most successful partners have committed to learning about our power management products. When they’re talking to their customers about server upgrades, for example, they can have intelligent conversations about UPS. That builds trust and confidence and helps to strengthen relationships,” says Swadling.

Eaton has also worked closely with distribution partners, such as Ingram Micro, Bluechip Infotech, Datec and Synnex, to ensure its partners are supported and to make it easier for them to deal with Eaton. Dedicated BDMs, service sales teams and a customer service team constantly engage with partners and distributors.

Short circuiting potential supply chain issues

Eaton partners also benefited from the company’s anticipation of supply chain challenges early in the pandemic. Expecting disruption to the global supply chain, Eaton increased its local stock levels and encouraged its IT and electrical distributors to do the same. This was at a time when some other vendors were downsizing their warehouses.

“By increasing how much stock we carry, we’ve been able to supply our partners and customers seamlessly throughout the pandemic. We also picked up new partners during this period as partners switched to Eaton due to stock availability, and then stayed with us,” concludes Swadling.

Learn more about the Eaton PowerAdvantage Partner Programme.