Eaton hopes to launch a local version of its power advantage partner program next month which will provide upfront discounts in exchange for lead registration.
The company, which makes power management products such as uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), launched the tool in the United States five months ago.
"It gets us as a vendor in touch with the reseller community even though they're purchasing back through their chosen distributor," Eaton's national channels manager Darren Butterworth said.
The tool enabled partners to register new deals and gain access to marketing development funds and resources.
Partners were divided into two levels - certified and accredited - with the former having to complete training and exams before they could progress to the next level.
"There's a different level of discount provided based on the reseller's certification level so the incentive to move up is additional discounts [that go back through the distributor]," Butterworth said.
"But then depending on the opportunity size and then deal-by-deal there's some additional scope to help our partners."
"The power advantage system launched in the U.S. three months ago. We're localising it and hoping to go live next month, or the month after at [the latest]," said general manager of power quality Michael Mallia.
"We've told partners that it's coming."
The company had also recently revamped its salesweb extranet, a technical resource for distributors and partners that covered access to resources like runtime charts and manuals.
It had about 10 IT distributors on its books, including Synnex Australia and Bluechip Infotech.
Mallia said Eaton had spent a lot of time trying to become more channel-focused, after emerging from the power engineering space in years past.
He said the "next step was to take data centre services and products into the channel".
He believed partner opportunities were for "more than just UPS [but also] reticulation and power management through the racks" in data centres.
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