Symantec’s Global Channel Strategy in detail...

Symantec has announced a new Global Channel Strategy, designed to change how the company goes to market.

A direct result of the transformation of the company, which started earlier this year, the result is a more committed channel approach.

"Going forward, we’ll focus on helping you solve our joint customers’ important jobs by investing in the right channels, at the right time, to help create sustained partner growth," said a company announcement.

"In fact, we’re more committed to our partners and distributors than ever before."

Set to launch in phases beginning in early 2014, the change in strategic direction and operational plan is necessary to reassess and optimize Symantec's "offering strategy and our go-to-market strategy."

For channel partners, this is designed to result in more business opportunities while delivering a superior experience to our joint customers," Symantec says.

"Our new strategy focuses on helping you to build your business and offering more rewards for the value you provide to customers.

"Our new program framework allows our partners to take on an ever increasing role of responsibility and relevance.

"Our shared, focused strategy encourages the right partners to provide the best possible customer experience."

Symantec Channel Strategy:

1. What is Symantec’s vision for the channel?

Symantec’s channel vision incorporates three key tenets:

* Partners are essential to our business and at the heart of Symantec’s core values.

* We execute a shared, focused, and intentional strategy that encourages the right partners to provide the best possible customer experience.

* We recognize and reward our partners based on the value they provide.

2. What is Symantec’s objective for the Channel?

Our objective is to achieve sustained profitable growth, greater than market, by leveraging joint assets to deliver value to the customer.

Symantec is transforming to become a market-led organization and looking at how we can solve big customer jobs together with partners.

3. What does the term ‘market-led’ mean?

Market-led means that we have taken an ‘outside-in’ approach where customers will guide our go-to-market strategy.

With this approach, together with our partners, we will solve bigger customer jobs while improving the customer experience. We’ll also enable customers to buy Symantec solutions in ways that align with to how they do business.

4. How did Symantec develop the channel strategy?

We started with a framework and methodology that was agreed and validated by internal and external experts. We looked at the jobs that our channel partners are solving for customers in addition to how customers and partners work with our products.

We analyzed our channel ecosystem to determine which partner types would be best suited to deliver the solutions that our customers need.

We then looked at how to logically group our partners and map them to the products where they should focus. The resulting information provided guidance on where the channel should play and how to win in addition to providing investment guidance on where we should optimize resources and investments in the channel.

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