Meet the VMware Global Innovation Marketing Partner of the Year 2016!
COMPAREX was acknowledged for conducting the first multi-national campaign of a partner last night at the VMware Partner Leadership Summit.
This is fantastic! Congrats to our team!
Goals and challenges
The pilot campaigned aimed at transferring VMware messages in the corporate
layout of COMPAREX, to complete them with COMPAREX services and thus create
added value for the customer. Key solutions of VMware – such as vSOM (vSphere
with Operations Management), vSAN (virtual storage function integrated in
vSphere), vCloud Air and AirWatch were promoted with these measures.
The first challenge was to use the VMware budget, as well as the resources
provided - in terms of staff - as efficient as possible. Up to date, COMPAREX
has been only conducting VMware specific marketing and business development
actions separately, in each subsidiary. Regarding quality and quantity, they
varied strongly in the past. Often, there was no marketing budget for VMware
marketing activities available at all or just very limited resources for vendor
marketing.
The second challenge was the selection of the products to focus on.
Previous campaigns had partially concentrated on less important products. For
that reason, key products were explicitly identified, a central marketing budget
was organized and content in COMPAREX design was created.
The third challenge was the individual requirements of the respective markets.
Therefore, three different campaign packages were created from which the
countries could choose in order to deliver according to the different market
needs. In addition, the subsidiaries invested in gaining all relevant VMware
competencies that now form the basis for even higher quarterly VMware product
rebates.
Process and approach
Firstly, with the help of VMware the solution focus was determined.
Moreover, the vendor supported
the campaign with the latest content as well as
with additional EMEA marketing budget, as part of the VMware Market Mover
program. After their initial applications, more than ten countries were chosen
by VMware on the basis of their market position and current certification
status, but most important, they were elected due to their strategic plans with
VMware. In the first phase, the campaign focused on vSOM and vSphere
Optimization Asessment (VOA). With great success: The added value of vSOM could
be conveyed to a multitude of customers and by using vSOM-Dashboards COMPAREX
could in one case point out bottlenecks that the customer itself had not been
able to identify within twelve months. In other cases, an extended “what-if”
analysis was presented to the customer on management level which resulted in a
company-wide rollout of vSOM.
Secondly, prioritized target of the campaign were existing vSphere
customers. By presenting the added value of VOA, existing customers were
convinced to realize further projects with VMware products. In the next round,
vSAN and vSAN Optimization Assessment are to be put forward in order to inflict
a vSAN discussion and thus exeed vSphere.
Finally, based on the success of the vSphere campaign further requests of
COMPAREX subsidiaries were received in order to benefit from centrally created
VMware campaign material, as well. The pilot project is considered as a very
successful first attempt between Global Partner Sales, International Marketing
and last but not least the local COMPAREX subsidiaries.
Perceptions of the project
A recap of the project: A multinational VMware campaign is not an easy
thing, especially if you need to coordinate such a heterogeneous group of
COMPAREX organizations. Therefore, the key to the success of the project was the
cooperation between the countries and the way they discussed matters. The
formation of informal groups for marketing and manufacturers contributed
significantly to the positive result. The project also benefited from the
networking of COMPAREX employees and VMware Champs - especially on local level.
Regional characteristics were thus taken into account, some of which are
considerably importance in the EMEA region. By sharing best practices and
success stories, learning effects - according to the motto, learning by doing '-
were achieved. At the same time other COMPAREX subsidiaries signalized their
interest of becoming part of the community, as well.
