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Lenovo invites resellers to return

Stefan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:35:10 +0000

Lenovo has recently advised previous resellers to get back into the fold after revealing numerous changes specially designed to return the channel to the centre of its tactics. According to CRN, the vendor will be allowing distributors to retail stock for special bids from their warehouses. This ultimately means that resellers can easily get hold of the discounted stock in 24hrs instead of three weeks, which brings Lenovo in direct competition with its rivals such as HP.

The vendor will now be paying funds within a month of the quarter-end in order to assist resellers’ cashflow. Earlier, resellers had to wait up to three months.

The vender will however, continue to serve big multi-national clients and allow direct consumers and SMEs to purchase from its website. However, Vincent Fauquenot, who will be heading the recently formed Channel Partners organisation in Western Europe, said that the revamp was a major shift in its tactics. He also said that their channel is where they are putting their development efforts and money, where they expect growth to come.

HP charging their partners for anti-bribery training

Mary — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:34:25 +0000

Hewlett-Packard is asking its worldwide network of 154,000 channel partners to complete a regulatory fulfilment guidance program by 31st October or possibly lose their partner status. Recently HP notified a few partners based in the US by means of a faxed letter that describes the compulsory requirement and a fee of $120 that is only payable by credit card.

The delivery method, along with the credit card only terms, began a bit of an uproar among the solution providers. Some of them said they believed the faxes they received were a hoax. However, it is not scam. HP is actually demanding that partners register for the program, complete a short fulfilment training module with a 3rd party contractor, review and agree to HP’s Partner Code of Conduct and complete a questionnaire to measure compliance risk.

HP partner Software To Go president, Joe Balsarotti, said that the ASCII Group’s online discussion was buzzing with irritated HP resellers as the faxes announced the compliance program started arriving over the past month.

Sony expands VAIO to B2B for better channel management

Brad — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:11:54 +0000

After the launch of the Sony Vaio W series recently, the company has made a decision to expand its VAIO notebook business into a wider portfolio of business to business. According to Sony, this move will enable its channel partners to deal with it more easily.

It is thought that such a measure taken on behalf of Sony to restructure will surely result in job losses in the end. There are those within the company who have moved on to managing bigger responsibilities. One such person is David Spratt who was formerly Vaio’s business to business channel manager. He has now been moved to a project based role within the company itself.

In the meanwhile, the business to business sales director for the company said that this move on part of Sony would enable it to concentrate all its efforts better on reseller and distributor demands.

According to the statement the changes will enhance the overall business product portfolio of the company, by incorporating the pertinent product ranges making its Vaio business an all rounder of sorts.

The new business to business channel manager and dealer head will be Naina Tailor. She will have the added responsibility of overlooking various other business to business products.