San Francisco – Autodesk Inc. held its global channel summit yesterday where the company announced the creation of a new worldwide channel sales organization and enhancements to its partner program.
Bill Griffin, the vice-president of worldwide channel sales at Autodesk, said the worldwide channel sales organization was formed to create a more consistent partner experience and improve its partner relationships. The purpose of the organization is to also help the company scale and grow its global network of channel partners, which includes about 2,000 partners around the globe today, Griffin said.
“We sell nearly 200 software products and we have lots of different divisions,” Griffin said. “Our vision is to roll out our partner strategy globally to make it easier for partners to understand and do business with us.”
To support the worldwide channel sales organization, Ray Savona has been named the vice-president of EMEA channel sales, Denis Branthonne is the vice-president of APAC channel sales and Gary Smith is the senior director of Autodesk’s Americas channel sales.
Autodesk executives said right off the bat, its partners likely won’t notice the worldwide channel organization having any direct impact to their business, but over time, they say partners will notice a more simplistic channel offering.
At the event, company executives also explained the enhancements made to its Autodesk Partner Program, which was formally rolled out last year. The enhancements include the introduction of a Platinum tier, new product certifications and specializations, as well as a new customer satisfaction measurement tool for partners.
“Our partner strategy is working, so we only have minimal changes,” Roland Zelles, Autodesk’s vice-president of worldwide channel sales operations and field marketing, said. “It’s important for our partners to have a predictable and reliable model going forward.”
The Autodesk Partner Program now has Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum levels. Zelles said the Platinum level will be introduced in the August or November timeframe, and will be kept “exclusive” in nature.
“We want to make this an exclusive level because it will be a huge differentiator for the partner,” Zelles said.
Griffin added, “We want an exclusive (Platinum) club and not a watered down one. I expect we’d have less than five per cent of our worldwide partners in Platinum, which would be a huge differentiator for partners.”
Platinum partners are required to demonstrate a deep level of industry expertise and must also meet certain training, certification and customer satisfaction requirements. While Platinum level partners will receive higher margin opportunities, executives would not comment on just how much more margin partners would make above the Gold level.
“The (margin) differentiation between Bronze and Silver would be of a decent size but where partners would see the biggest difference is from Bronze to Platinum,” Griffin said.
The company also announced four new partner specializations around consulting, building engineering, process plant and factory design. The specializations are meant to help partners establish a more focused business practice around each respective area, Zelles said.
The company also announced on-demand training and certification for partners that are role-based and industry-specific in content. The training is available to partners around the world and is the same training Autodesk employees also receive, Zelles said.
As an evolution to its customer-centric go-to-market strategy with its partners, Autodesk also announced a new Customer Satisfaction Program, which is a Web-based customer-focused survey that uses Net Promoter Score methodology. The goal of the program is to help partners improve their customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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