Fortinet announces new range of channel incentives
To gain commitment and help partners make money
Fortinet has announced a range of channel initiatives to run alongside its aims of creating value and securing commitment from its resellers and distributors.
The new initiatives include programmes and tools that will focus on education, profit and proximity, which the company hopes will help increase the expertise and profitability of its channel partners.
Its new education initiative includes the new Authorised Training Centres (ATCs) programme, which Fortinet claims is designed to provide additional sales benefits to existing ATCs and foster the presence of ATCs at the local level.
It will work by evaluating the performance and commitment of each ATC and will work with qualified instructors to help increase the product expertise of Fortinet’s reseller community. As part of this initiative, Fortinet has also developed a series of marketing tools, which include free online webinars and targeted channel communications depending on the partner’s status and product specialisation.
The company highlighted a 40-minute quarterly programme, which it claims is specifically designed to educate Fortinet partners on new products and channel tools as well as IT security trends.
The second initiative works around profit. Fortinet has introduced a deal registration tool, which it claims is aimed at protecting channel partners who actively identify new business opportunities and comprehensively share them with Fortinet.
It has launched an automated tool encouraging resellers to take leadership on sales opportunities and in exchange be rewarded with Fortinet sales and technical support knowledge to help close these deals faster. There’s also a web-based interface – the Renewal asset tracking tool – which is said to help resellers identify renewal income opportunities through unit and subscription services tracking, contracts information and identification of upgrade/up sell opportunities.
Finally the company is also offering help with what it calls “proximity.”
It has recently launched the Fortinet mobile application, which claims to give partners easy access to Fortinet’s product information and threat research update. Developed for iPhone and Android operating systems, the application includes a search engine to access full product information as well as the FortiGate identification tool to help find the right device according to the client’s specific security requirements. There’s also a partner and Fortinet office locator and access to the FortiGuard Security Centre for real-time updates on the latest global threat levels and the Top 10 threats list.
Emilio Roman, vice president of international sales operations at Fortinet, said: “Fortinet sells exclusively through its channel partners. Pursuing our goal of becoming the leading network security vendor, it is thus paramount that we keep improving our channel strategy in order to foster the business opportunities of our resellers and distributors.
“Today’s channel initiatives are designed to help further support our resellers and reward our high-value partners, who truly invest in our brand, technology and products.”