Creator Tech designs Polycom's Preferred Partner Program

To improve its customer service, Polycom wanted to re-focus and enhance how it worked with partners to integrate and deploy new collaboration technologies and services.

The Preferred Partner Program rewards channel partners who adapt to the new market requirements.

"Creator Tech really helped us get the Preferred Partner Program delivered, not only by designing the program, but also actively dealing with our key partners to ensure it was well understood and addressed their needs," said Michael Chetner, country manager, Polycom A/NZ.

To address go-to-market challenges of delivering collaborations solutions, the program identified and developed a group of Preferred Partners with expertise in IP-based voice, video and web solutions.

It also strengthened existing Channel Partners who have invested in video conferencing and collaboration.

The assignment included Polycom direct touch sales involvement; channel selection criteria; and the practicalities of becoming a channel partner.

The relevance, benefits and workability of the program were tested directly with channel partners before launching the program in 2008.

The project was led by Creator Tech's Frank Zeichner, who has held director-level positions at OpenTel and with Alcatel in Australia and Europe.

The company has assisted clients including Alcatel-Lucent, Packeteer (now part of BlueCoat), Sandvine, Hatteras and others to optimise their go-to-market models in Australia, New Zealand and Asia.