2006 Some Year, No?

Three down (almost) and one to go. That’s right, three quarters of 2006 are almost in the books, leaving you but the December quarter to make your mark. (Think you got a month left of this quarter? Guess again. By the time you unpack from vacation, get the kids back to school and dial in to that first regular season football game of the season, your third quarter will be as fresh as the cantaloupe rind you tossed on Sunday.)

So what should you do? Start with your advisory council. When did you last reach out? Spring? C’mon. That was April. That was, like, ancient times. People still had high hopes for the year. Afterwards, they thought Q1 was abnormally slow and held out for more. Boy were they wrong. Time to roll some calls to partners. Let ‘em know how your year is going. (Why not? They already know the public numbers.) They might need some motivation. That’s especially true if they aren’t in San Francisco, where the low was 50 degrees and the high 63 degrees on Monday. Everywhere else? Hot. You know what, based on weather alone, call a partner in San Antonio, where it was over 100 degrees on Monday. Call. Check in. Inquire. When was the last time you did that for no other reason?

Ask about the year ahead. What will they will emphasize to a greater extent next year compared to this one? What will suffer from attention as a result?

If nothing else, arm yourself with inside information. Get what you can on stuff inside your company; we’ll help you with the outside stuff. Here’s Amazon Consulting’s ’06 vendor momentum cheat sheet.

• AMD: Good, until you factor in price war with Intel. Afterwards? Not so good.
• Intel: $18 and change per share is akin to finding yourself in 38 degree weather locked outside of your call. Sucks, but you’ll recover.
• Apple: Coming Zune to a holiday near you: iPod shortages. The kids are all right.
• Microsoft: So much growth, so little respect.
• IBM: As loveable as uninspiring. Boy it woulda have been neat if da Vinci code were a good film.
• HP: Cute comeback. Does it come in software?
• McAfee & Juniper: Remain seated until the Captain says it’s safe to move about the cabin.
• Dell: Well, thank God there’s that rich patent portfolio...
• Symantec: Dull and uninspiring, just like a post mega-merger year should be.
• Oracle: Who knew Larry could do quiet. Shhh...
• Sun, Novell, Sybase, Lucent, etc.: More mediocre than before.

CLIENT SPOTLIGHT

Symantec has always worked hard to maintain a robust partner program. As the company has expanded over the years, so have Symantec’s partnerships. Recently, after taking stock of its partner programs worldwide, Symantec realized that in order to continue to provide excellent service to partners and customers alike, their programs needed to be overhauled. As a result of partner programs that varied from region to region as well as several corporate acquisitions, Symantec had a confusing number of partnerships with varying rules of engagement, partner program benefits, and success metrics. In order to increase sales and market awareness of its combined product lines as well as to improve partner and customer satisfaction, Symantec needed to unify its partner program across product offerings, market segments, and global regions.

Symantec looked to Amazon Consulting to help create a new partner program structure that supported Symantec’s corporate goals, unified all existing partner programs, and aligned all partners worldwide using consistent eligibility standards, performance metrics, and program benefits. To accomplish this, they developed a strategy to create a new, unified partner structure, develop a new partner program framework and infrastructure, and finally, to create a comprehensive transition plan.
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