Microsoft is making some sweeping changes to Large Account Resellers (LARs) rebates and will outline its plans at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington this week.
In essence, Redmond is halving LAR fees from its new fiscal year starting 1 July 2011 on sales to large multi-national corporations and will raise the funds LARs can accrue from selling to SMEs.
It is not yet clear which end-user clients will be involved in the top tier or named list, for which LARs will no longer be compensated, those details will be presented behind closed doors at this week's event in the US capital, which has so far been dominated by the cloud.
The restructure mimics changes Microsoft has made to distributor fees recently, and is a path well trodden by the likes of HP and other hardware vendors.
At least Microsoft has learned lessons from past mistakes when it gave LARs too little time to swallow changes to the rebate envelope and was forced to delay them not once, or twice but three times.
Perhaps it has given them too much time to realign the business in preparation for the rejig, maybe one or two will have decided that by this time next year the amount of money on the table makes the LAR accreditation less attractive.
Leave a comment