Seagate Technology

Problem:
Seagate Technology, the world’s leading manufacturer of disc drives was very successful at selling their drives to the big OEMs. However, they considered themselves vulnerable because of their heavy reliance on relatively few large customers.

Solution:
Charlie Wallace, now Core’s Vice President and Senior Partner, was hired to drive business through Seagate’s fledgling channels. While Seagate had already achieved modest success in the channel, their competitors; Western Digital, Maxtor, IBM and Quantum dominated the space.

The first step was to expand the size of their channel by building their base of resellers from under one-thousand to over 30,000 partners globally. The expansion was accomplished by creating and implementing Seagate’s first global partner program. The program established the Seagate Brand in the channel and delivered a full range of value-added components that the partners needed to be successful. A key deliverable was a goal-based rewards program that rewarded business owners with increased profits and channel sales reps with more dollars in their pocket when they sold a Seagate product. Other value-add deliverable included START – the Seagate Technology Authorized Reseller Training – MDF process and metrics, Sales Tools and an award-winning, permission-based web portal for both company principals and their employees.

Result:
In less that two years Seagate’s business shifted to 40% OEM and 60% Channels. Seagate’s overall market share in the channel went from number five to second and their overall market share went from third place to number one. In the VarBusiness Magazine’s ARC - Annual Report Card – which measures channel satisfaction for technology vendors in the same market, Seagate has never finished higher that fourth place. In 2000, one year after the global partner program was launched, Seagate was awarded first place in the “Partnership” category for disc drives. In 2001, Seagate captured first place across all three categories: Products, Service and Partnership. The program has also been the recipient of top honors in Brazil, Mexico, India, England and Germany. In his 2002 editorial, Bob DeMarzo, CMP & VarBusiness editor-in-chief credited Mr. Wallace with Seagate’s success in the Channel and in 2003 said that “Charlie Wallace is the man who taught Seagate how to spell VAR”. Seagate again received top honors across all categories in the 2003 ARC and remains the top player in the global channels.