Register that deal!

Where Attain would like to see Oracle’s registration system improve however is in the margin department. Better margins “aren’t necessarily” part of the registration process with Oracle, Parton admits.

“We would like to see Oracle provide greater margins for dealers that are prepared to register.”

The software industry has been generally slower to adopt deal registration. A spokesperson for Microsoft said that they were unaware of any such programs in place at the company.

Citrix has, however, run deal registration for several years now and reports that the program has been a great success. Unlike many other vendors, the company’s program was first developed in Australia before being rolled out to other regions and therefore is slightly slanted to the local market. For one thing it’s about the fairest program out there, says Phil Dean-Jones, Citrix ANZ director of Channel sales.

“The difference between ours is it rewards the partner even if they’re not successful in winning the sales.”

The reason, he explains, is to maintain partner loyalty to the products and the brand.

The company views this as especially important with new products. While Citrix’s Australian customers can earn up to 8 points additional margin with existing products, new products can attract up to 15 points.

The result has been greater channel satisfaction: “We’ve had remarkably few contentious situations.”

“What were trying to do is get partners to latch onto the opportunity as early as possible in the sales process,”

“If they get involved early then it opens up a greater likelihood that they’re going to be successful.” It really hinges on partners buying into the programs which they usually only do once they recognise the returns.

For instance, on the services side, Dean-Jones ads, partners can make up to five times that which they take for selling the license through registration.

At IBM, partners that don’t complete the deal still get 10 percent for identifying the deals and registering as part of the company’s Software Value Incentive program - just announced in Australia - according to channels manager Scott Kardash.

It’s not viewed as a high price for the market intelligence that results.

“These guys obviously have lots of eyes and ears in the market that we don’t have,”

“It [ registration ] allows us to forecast more accurately and understand which deals need the technical and pricing support.”

Avoiding disputes is a big priority.

“It’s a natural thing for any partner out there to be concerned. We go to great lengths to ensure that when a partner comes to us that we protect that,” Kardash says.

“I personally get involved when there’s potential for conflict in that area.” Software is the main driver focus for IBM’s registration plans at the moment although hardware partners are starting to receive more support for registering prospects.

Kardash sees registration as deserving of more industry attention moving forward as it is something which clearly can be harnessed for competitive advantage, by both vendors and the channel.

“Partners able to provide good hunting skills in the market will be attracted to those vendors that are offering the best margin for that service,” he says.

“It reinforces and underlines the reason we have business partners in the first place.”

Essential part of business

Symantec is about 18 months into its registration program in Australia and says that it has now become an essential part of doing business and interacting with the channel.

“I think it’s just about companies getting a lot smarter about their financial relationship with the partner community,” says John Donnovan, VP channels Symantec Asia Pacific and Japan.

He stresses that Symantec does not make registration mandatory, nor is it available to everyone at this stage, only its 30 or so gold and platinum partners. One of its more compelling features is the emphasis on protecting the status of dealers as having initiated an ‘incremental opportunity’. Closure of these deals can result in up to 9 points additional margin. Unsuccessful registrations get a modest 3 percent consolation prize.

In a broader business sense Symantec sees the program as leading to better quality channel partnerships and is also expected to help with the integration of new products such as those resulting from last year’s acquisition of Veritas.

“It obviously builds a much closer financial relationships between larger trading partners,” Donnovan says adding: “Additional margin tends to get used for business development and market development activities.”

And, in common with most other major vendors, Symantec has also been able to garner valuable new market data through deal registration.

“We are now forecasting ‘incremental contribution’ through the channel.”

As for the dishonest downside of registration: “The question has been asked but the issue has not come up,” Donnovan says.

“It’s not in our interests to have channel players in conflict.”

Gavin Jarvis, GM channels Australia and New Zealand with security specialists RSA says that the company’s registration program started just over a year ago and has delivered good results.

“The flow of information has improved.” he says, adding that some 3,500 deals have been registered since its inception.

Once a partner does register a deal they then have 30 to 120 days to close the opportunity. The rebates arising from registered deals can range from six percent for a license upgrade to 12 percent for a new sign-on manager licence.

“It [ registration ] has allowed us to provide our partners with additional recognition for bringing the deals to us.”

Where it goes wrong

David Stevens, managing director of Sydney integrator SecureTel and Brennan IT Systems like many in the channel has seen registration go wrong. But because his companies’ solutions tend to be more specialised, there is less risk of the rug being pulled out from under them.

“It’s about the final configuration rather than the box at the end,”

“It’s a really differentiated solution from our perspective and no one can resell what we do: Any box we buy would only be 10 percent of the solution anyway.”

Rather than cause fear and suspicion Stevens has found that registration makes it easier and more profitable to do business.

“We’ve used it on a number of occasions and it’s smoothed out the sales process.”

But it wasn’t always that way, Stevens says as he recalls a time three years ago of having worked on a deal only to find a major PC vendor slip in direct.

“We were most upset: we recommended that the client buy Dell.”

“But their behaviour is much more appropriate now: there’s been a really defined change.” Registration is now an important tool for business.

“Our cost of sales is lower because our sales cycle is smoother and ultimately shorter.”

Cisco Systems offers two separate registration programs. The first is the Opportunity Incentive Program (OIP). Known internally as ‘the hunting program’, OIP only started locally in October last year and is designed to encourage particularly Cisco’s tier 2 partners to register no-name, or new SMB business in return for additional support and rebates.

Unlike almost every other vendor though, Cisco does not discuss rebates, explaining that they are negotiated case-by-case between its resellers and distributors.

Some in the channel have been critical of how Cisco runs registration but Australian channels manager Suzy Mellor maintains that things appears to be working so far.

“In terms of bringing us new customers I’d say it has been very successful.”

She believes that it has also levelled the playing field somewhat within Cisco’s channel making it “easier for little partners to compete with bigger partners.”

The other registration program Cisco runs in Australia is the Solutions Incentive Program (SIP) designed to reward partners that market reengineered Cisco products into specific verticals such as education with rebates of around 4 percent from list. Gold partners can earn rebates of up to 52 percent.

Given that it is still early days Mellor anticipates a fair mount of tweaking before being completely satisfied with Cisco’s registration programs.

“Part of next year’s planning will look at areas where we need partners to bring in new business,” she says, adding that “selling new technology or new products is a possible focus for future dealer registration offerings.”

But the company says that it realises the importance of ensuring that such programs are accessible and easy to understand if they are to gain broad appeal.

“It’s all around being really clear but not being so complicated you just put people off.”

Lawyers at Lexmark are currently poring over a blue print for its imminent registration program, which is under very close wraps.

“We want to get it right before we go ahead,” says Tim Champion, channels director with Lexmark Australia.

The fact that Lexmark’s products lean towards the commodity side explains why registration has appeared on its radar later than others. Still Champion believes that it will provide an important new level of interaction for the company and its channel.

“The important thing is that partners that invest in your brand receive some sort of handshake for doing that,” he says.

“How you deliver that is bound by all sorts of legal and loyalty issues.”

And if anything is likely to be a true test of vendor and channel trust and loyalty at the moment it is deal registration.

As SecureTel and Brennan IT Systems’ David Stevens says: “If you can’t trust them [vendors] that much you probably shouldn’t be doing business with them.”