Westcon launches CollaborationPoint program 5 February, 2008 By Patricia Pickett

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According to Duncan Potter, Westcon's chief marketing officer, the program, dubbed CollaborationPoint, has some features in common with some of the distributor's other solution programs, such as ConvergencePoint and SecurityPoint, which provide resellers with selling and configuration tools, market analysis and product information in specific technology areas.

"There is a real opportunity over the next few months and quarters to see the space around collaboration start to expand...and we want to make sure that our resellers have a place to go that they can start to get familiar with, and that is bound into the rest of the programmatic structure, so we can give them access to all of the tools we have in place," Potter said.

Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Westcon introduced CollaborationPoint partially as a follow-on to its acquisition of audio, videoconferencing and VoIP solution distributor ReView Video last year. Because it acquired ReView's Polycom business in the U.S. and U.K. as part of that deal, and also launched a Polycom business in Australia, Westcon will feature Polycom as CollaborationPoint's foundation vendor. However, information on a number of complementary or "affinity" vendors -- such as Canon, JVC, NEC, Panasonic and LG -- will be included in order to help resellers build full solutions, Potter said.

The foundation-plus-affinity-vendor strategy worked well in the past, Potter noted. "When we presented a specific program with information around a foundation vendor, but then provided (resellers) with a direct link in a compatible way to all vendors whose products could be used around that (foundation) vendor, what we found was that it became a lot easier to access information directly from those vendors."

In the process of establishing its program philosophy, Westcon spent some time finding out where resellers needed help, and ended up building its resources based on the end-user sales cycle concept, Potter said. "We put together all the tools and capabilities we have, including advanced tools in many different areas, from training all the way through...the current competitive environment, while giving resellers access to both online and directly accessible services," such as pre-sales support, configuration checking, financing options, and post-sales and implementation support, he said. "When you've got a philosophy like that, you can support your resellers with programs that offer more than the concept of, 'We've got lots of stuff.'" Of the resources CollaborationPoint will offer, resellers will likely benefit most from the core sales support for the Polycom offering, Potter said. In addition, pre-sales support will be important, as will the market analysis portion, since it will "enable resellers who are looking at other technology areas to start investigating this particular market," he said.

Potter noted that while the program is currently only available to U.S. and Canadian resellers, Westcon is looking into rolling it out in additional geographies, such as Australia, South America and Europe.

In addition, as part of the CollaborationPoint launch, Westcon is offering 90-day interest free financing on all products, installations and services sold through the end of February 2008. To qualify for the 90-day terms, resellers must register on the CollaborationPoint portal and be credit-qualified by Westcon, and they must set up the financing terms before the end of the month.