By Paul Kunert
11 September 2008
Resellers complaints that Dell is not as a dynamic since it formalised channel partnerships and securing special bid pricing can take much longer has led the PC maker to designate a team internally to smooth the mechanism.
Partners told Microscope that the turnaround times for special bid quotes can take up to two days and Dell had lost the agility it demonstrated before it put firm channel processes in place.
“Since Dell had a channel strategy it has got harder to get bids,” said one partner that asked to remain unnamed, “it is a problem for us that has added a couple of days to the process.”
Josh Claman, Dell vice president of EMEA channels said it was working to address the situation but had needed to put controls in place to ring fence leads generated by partners as it formalised its channel engagement.
“There is a certain process overhead in terms of doing that and that has in some cases slowed our responsiveness. We are working hard to make sure that those controls don’t slow the velocity of the sales process,” Claman continues.
A “business process engineering team” is working on the specific issue said Claman and the turnaround of special bid quotes should take three to four hours, “ideally we’d want it to be instantaneous”.
