Nortel revamps EMEA channel program

Nortel Tuesday announced it has updated its channels program in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). It hopes to sign up new partners that sell to smaller companies and increase the amount of business it does through its big resellers, it said.

It’s the first broad shake-up for Nortel’s EMEA channel since 2001. Last year it did some market research and much “soul searching” to figure out how to improve the program and grow its EMEA business faster than the market as a whole, said Rob Shervill, Nortel’s head of channel strategy and support for the region.

In the small to midsized business (SMB) area, Nortel is making it easier for channel players that target businesses with less than 250 employees to join its partner program by reducing the level of investment and accreditation they require, Shervill said.

Nortel sees SMBs as a fast-growth opportunity. It launched an IP-based communication system for small businesses last year, called Business Communication Manager 50. It also has Ethernet switching products for SMBs and plans to offer routing switches for them later in the year, Shervill said. It also targets smaller customers with firewall and wireless LAN products.

The company competes with Alcatel, Cisco, 3Com, Avaya and others.

Adding more SMB partners is one thrust of the new channel program, called Accelerate. The other is driving more business through its existing big partners, which include British Telecommunications and Affiniti.

To do this Nortel is offering bigger financial rebates for partners that achieve certain sales growth targets. The targets are negotiated individually and depend on factors like the types of products the partner sells and historical trends.

“We’re not saying you have to double your [sales] numbers; the targets are individually negotiated. But if they beat that number they get a rebate, and when they start hitting 20% growth they’ll get a 20% rebate,” Shervill said.

The changes don’t alter the overall structure of Nortel’s partner program, and investments partners have made in accreditation and other plans are still valid, he said. “Everything’s in place, it’s just a question of exciting those channels,” he said.

Nortel has about 500 to 600 registered channel partners in EMEA, a figure that has stayed roughly constant since 2001, Shervill said.

Nortel grew its EMEA revenue by 15% for the first nine months of last year, to $2.1 billion, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That compared to 5% growth in the U.S., which is its biggest market, 11% growth in Canada and 32% growth in Asia Pacific.