Motorola Unveils PartnerEmpower Program

Motorola will be getting increasingly aggressive in expanding market
share through partners through its new channel program – Motorola
PartnerEmpower – a new effort to bring the full breadth of the
company’s enterprise mobility and communications products to market and
open new opportunities for independent software vendors (ISVs) and
resellers.

PartnerEmpower is essentially the next phase in the consolidation of
Motorola’s network wireless, radio and mobility platform businesses. In
2008, Motorola formed Enterprise Mobility Systems that essentially
combined the offerings of Symbol and Motorola’s enterprise businesses
under one roof. Last year, Motorola integrated its government business
into the consolidated framework.

What’s been missing to this point is a common global channel framework
that provides partners with a clear path to identifying solutions,
building sales and support practices, and bringing products to market.
The lack of commonality has exposed gaps in Motorola’s market share
penetration and coverage, particularly outside the retail and
transportation verticals.

Over the next 18 months, Motorola will introduce a series of tools,
education programs, competency programs and certifications, and
customer satisfaction measure to incent partners throughout its value
chain to invest in new products, go to market with holistically
designed solutions and tackle new market opportunities that result in a
net increase in Motorola and partner market share.

The long implementation period is designed to give Motorola partners
time to adjust their operations and business practices for the
program’s new requirements. Janet Schijns, vice president of global
channels, Motorola Enterprise Mobility Solutions, explains that all
partners will be grandfathered into their current entitlement levels –
platinum, gold, silver, bronze – but will have to achieve certain
milestones and “points” to earn their status going forward.

“The key is the focus,” says Schijns. We don’t want partners to take
their eye off the ball, so we want to add the capabilities and tools,
and give partners time to migrate into the program so we don’t disrupt
their businesses.”

Additionally, Motorola is making substantial investments in connecting
its resellers for peer-to-peer partnering to expand and enhance their
capabilities, partner relationship management and demand generation
activities. Investments in technology competency training and resources
alone are being tripled, Schijns said.

Overcoming capability limitations is one of the challenges Motorola is
looking to tackle with PartnerEmpower. The expense of developing and
maintaining teams with advanced technical skills is often too expensive
for partners to bear on their own. Motorola’s new social networking and
collaboration efforts will provide resellers with the ability to find
one another and team on complex and large engagements.

“Partner-to-partner is the only way to go to market because it
simply doesn’t make sense to go out and hire thousands of direct
salespeople,” says Mark Kroh, vice president of North America channels,
Motorola Enterprise Mobility Solutions.

Schijns believes the combined effort of adding competencies and
enabling partners to build practices around vertically oriented
solutions will provide Motorola resellers with a higher value
proposition, faster paths to market and sustained profitability.
Consequently, Motorola will gain by having coverage gaps filled and
expanded market share.