Lenovo execs say channel restructure will bring 'seamless engagement' for partners
Channel chiefs Pascal Bourguet and Jane Ashworth speak to CRN about the new opportunities for partners
Lenovo has promised partners "seamless engagement" with its portfolio after restructuring its channel as part of its "One Lenovo" vision.
Earlier this year, the PC giant restructured its global setup into three separate business groups - the Intelligent Device Group, the Infrastructure Solutions Group and the Solutions and Services Group.
Like many of its competitors, Lenovo is trying to move more towards services. Its CEO Yang Yuanqing told delegates at Canalys EMEA Forum 2021 virtual event last week that the company is "transforming from the world's number one PC company into a global services and solutions provider".
Lenovo's EMEA chief channel officer, Fiona O'Brien spoke at the EMEA Canalys Forum and told a media roundtable that the company's focus on services was in response to the "constantly changing" demands from customers.
"Lenovo fully recognises that it is very successful in the traditional hardware sale model, but equally we want to give choice to our customers to meet their needs," she said.
"In this ever-changing world where it's very difficult to fully plan and to plan in the long-term, having that flexible consumption is a benefit."
Lenovo used the conference to reaffirm its ‘One Lenovo' vision - its strategy to bring together all parts of the business.
This includes the introduction of its TruScale platform, which brings all of the company's as-a-service offerings together under one banner.
In an exclusive interview with CRN, global channel chief Pascal Bourguet and channel director for the UK & Ireland, Jane Ashworth, explained the changes in more detail.
The company has this month started to implement its Lenovo 360 project which is made up of three pillars - people, programmes and tools. People marks phase one of the strategy and began at the start of this month.
"Effective 1 October, we have begun bringing together our geo and marketing teams across PC endpoint infrastructure into united teams that will report into a single channel leader responsible for the entire portfolio," Bourguet explained.
"So the intent there is to provide a more seamless engagement with our teams to bring benefit to partners and to get access to our resources more easily and quickly for managing the entire portfolio."
And Ashworth said: "It really is about empowering our partners to utilise the full portfolio of Lenovo products, services and software to really understand and deliver on customer pain points, and we've not really been able to do that previously.
"We've joined together as one organisation. Partners really will see very subtle changes to start with. It will be around ‘one strategic vision', ‘one conversation with the partner'. What will happen is that the specialisation is then pulled into the conversation."
Phase two of the Lenovo 360 project - ‘programmes' - will then be implemented next year and will see partners wanting to focus on services and solutions introduced to three new business opportunities.
These include a programme called ‘Better Together' which will "incentivise partners and disties to overdrive on their business group targets and reward them for hyper-growth", a new suite of solutions for the channel and a "channel enabled ESG portfolio" which focuses on C02 offset and asset returns.
Lenovo is also introducing a range of tools geared towards its new channel programme which it claims will give partners an advantage in the market.
"The partners that are happy with their current setup, they can keep doing what they're doing, but partners wanting to expand their business and come with us on this solution and service transformation journey, then they'll be able to sell the entire portfolio and they'll be able to do that more seamlessly," Bourguet added.