For 25 years the CRN Awards has been a respected, sought-after acknowledgement of superior channel achievements, especially in the UK . Judging from feedback given by previous winners, receiving the award makes a difference to a business in the eyes of customers and partners. This year Quest is nominated for EMERGING VENDOR OF THE YEAR.
Since the divestiture from Dell, the NEW Quest ( under Francisco partners and Elliott management) has focused on channel as the route to market globally. To this end Quest has split into three business units , and adopted a two-tier channel- first and channel- only strategy.
Quest is bringing great new technology to the forefront of our market, especially SaaS- based products such as Quest OnDemand . This is a new and exciting play for Quest, and by increasing R & D funding, we’re ensuring our products are “ cloud ready” and in line with our customers ’ needs.
Quest’s channel strategy over the past year has changed and evolved, partly due to our distribution RFI process, which was rolled out on an “EMEA- wide” scale. We’ve made Quest relevant to distribution by rationalizing the number of distributors. This means we use a profiling interview process to select distributors that are not only aligned to our business units but also distributors that feel Quest is the right choice for them . By rationalizing, we’ve enabled our addressable market to grow for distribution and therefore the profit pools .
One of the key factors of Quest’s recent evolution is our channel partner relationships . With the onboarding of new distis through the RFI process, we’ve rejuvenated relationships to make them more meaningful to both Quest and the channel.
All in all we’ve designed our processes and programs this year to put channel first. Quest has created channel- ready bundles with preferential pricing for our exciting SaaS based technologies. For our partners we’ve spent a huge amount of effort and time to streamline operations so Quest is easy to do business with. Further, we’ve created accessible profit pools in the addressable market, margins and rebates for both reseller and distribution accounting, for up to 70% in some cases going back to the channel. Our certification training is now all online and free of charge.
We know that for Quest to succeed on a large scale, we must understand, respect and reward the channel - to leverage it in the best possible way so everyone benefits. For this reason, we ’ll continue on the road we’ve taken with our channel, and we are extremely excited for the future for both Quest and our partner community.
