Education key to reducing channel mistrust 11 June, 2009 By Steve Wexler

Cohen said some of the most important reasons for having a vendor neutral business education and certification program for the channel include: as business education is vendor neutral, this will eliminate the time and expense for a VAR to have to go through the same learning and testing from multiple vendors; it will be less expensive for a vendor to subsidize VAR education and certification then it will be for the vendors to offer these courses directly; and it is much easier to build end user demand for VARs who have one well-promoted business education and certification program then to give many diluted promotional messages.

Here's an excerpt of what some members of the North American channel think about this topic.

"I think this is critical," said Alan Komet, VP, global marketing, Promisec. "A customer has a difficult time telling the difference between the different vendors' programs and what the certification is worth. A program like a CISSP is known to be no nonsense."

That's why Cohen launched the TBA initiative, he responded. "VARs have been asking us to create this for the past five years. It is finally a reality ... a legitimate way to differentiate the VARs that belong in the business from the trunk slammers, boy-next-door, fly-by-nighters and other parasites that plague our industry. "

James (Jamie) Simzer believes in the value of certification programs but given the challenge of today's economy, said vendors need to consider shifting program focus from certification towards tactical skills development and execution. Organizations need to successfully generate new business opportunities and the "complexities of our industry dictate that this opportunity generation be vendor neutral." He adds that it has always been a challenge to link certification to execution.

"The right programs provide skills and management of activities that ultimately result in increased revenues."

Ryck Marciniak agrees that such training needs to be vendor neutral. "By doing this, it casts the widest net over the channel by making the training relevant to all. No one would be excluded due to their partnership, or lack of one, with any particular vendor."

However Marciniak adds that to ensure the success of this type of training/certification program you need to engage vendors. "They possess significant brand awareness with the channel. Their support will provide credibility to the training program. Vendors can provide critical knowledge that can form part of the training. They can help message to the channel the value of this program and encourage its adoption. And, vendors can help to underwrite the costs of such a training initiative. The big question, then, is: How do balance neutrality with vendor participation?"

He points to the example of educating the channel about managed services and the creation of the MSP Partners program (www.msppartners.com), a vendor-supported channel training initiative. "Although developed and partially funded by vendors, including Intel, Microsoft, Cisco and Ingram Micro, the training program itself is vendor neutral, as courses and information are supplied by CompTIA, Gartner and others."

In addition to the online training is a portal where vendors can provide on-demand webinars, documentation and other information regarding managed services and specifically as it relates to their product. "In essence they can provide extensions to the vendor neutral training materials. The program now has thousands of channel members registered for the training and more than 25 vendors supporting this initiative, and the program is growing! The end result is that a balance was created between the needs of the channel members -- vendor neutral training -- and the vendors."

The bottom line, concluded Cohen, is that vendor-neutral training and business certification makes sense. "Essentially, it comes down to time, money, human resources and overall effectiveness and cost efficiencies for vendors, VARs and end users."


Previous Trusted Business Advisor articles by this author:
07/30/09 The gray market (Part 2)
07/23/09 The black market and counterfeiting
05/29/09 Speed up your sales
05/15/09 Software piracy costs everybody
04/24/09 GTDC: Selling direct doesn't work
04/08/09 Is there a need for vendor-neutral education?
04/02/09 Twittering for success
03/25/09 Companies need to think smarter
03/04/09 Social media the new 'big thing'




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