SOUTHFIELD – CA is continuing the process of segmentation of its channel and direct sales teams. The most recent announcement out of CA will mean that many of the company’s named accounts served by its direct sales force will be moved over to become non-named accounts, and thereby served by the company’s channel partners.
“Initially we’d set on a process of beginning to do some segmentation,” said James Hanley, senior vice president of worldwide partner sales at CA, which mean that certain customer segments and product sets would be the realm of CA’s direct sales and other customer segments and products sets would be the realm of channel partners.
However, even within some of CA’s largest accounts, the company has gone to market with a “sell with” approach, meaning channel partners have played a role even in direct sales (or named) accounts.
“What we’re working on now is that continued migration of those accounts from named into the non-named category,” Hanley said. Within CA, non-named accounts are those that are served by the partner, not by the company’s direct sales team.
According to Hanley, the movement of some named accounts to non-named accounts will mean a deeper and broader penetration into named accounts by CA’s direct sales group, which will allow the company to pursue a greater systems market share with its sell-with strategy.
Additionally, partners will likely be able to drive deeper into non-named accounts, he said. The notion of migrating named accounts to non-named accounts, in combination with the demand generation and support functions the company has put in place, has so far been met with positive reactions from CA’s partner community, Hanley said.
“From a partner standpoint, if you’re interested in making partners happy, that’s pretty good,” Hanley said.
Hanley noted that CA is not in the managed services or outsourcing businesses. That element is left to the company’s partners to fulfill, so there are no conflicts in that arena, he said.
What will be done with these ex-named, now non-named accounts? How will the company move them over to channel partners?
“If we can, we’d like to move them into existing partners that we’ve been working with,” Hanley said. Customers sometimes have a preference regarding which channel partners they work with, though, so that will also be taken into account. The company will also be considering the overall revenue, geographic reach and purchased products of the customer, he said.
“We’re going to maintain the largest customers in a mode that is sell-with and involves a lot of participation. I think that’s natural,” Hanley said.
