Synnex Varnex 2.0 a More Advanced Program for Partners

Synnex this week announced Varnex 2.0, an evolution of the distributor’s 10-year-old exclusive peer-to-peer reseller community. At the same time, Synnex celebrated its 40^th year in business. These events were discussed this week at the two-day Fall Varnex 2020 (virtual) conference.

Varnex 2.0 will be technology-driven. To date, the peer-to-peer community has been more focused on marketing, collaboration and partnerships. According to Synnex, its custom community of resellers – about 450 in North America – represents more than $1.3 billion in annual topline revenue.

Synnex’s Michael Urban

Michael Urban, president, worldwide technology solutions distribution at Synnex, elaborates on Varnex 2.0. He talks about what Varnex 2.0 means to existing Varnex partners, as well as potential members the company wants to attract.

Channel Futures: Big step to evolve the exclusive Varnex program. Tell us more.

Michael Urban: Varnex 2.0 means that we’re looking forward to having a much more advanced program for our customer partners. We’ve had a strong partnership with Varnex members and support them in all ways. But with 2.0, the idea of Varnex is enhanced, making it richer for the market.

What we’ve seen is that the partner focus over the past 10 years is broad. Our customers asked for certain deliverables, say a PC and software, etc. But now solutions are more complex. We’ve seen partners migrate to a more niche approach focusing on a certain area. They’re specialists, they know what to do and they’ve found a way to make money in this niche. Specialization has been key for many of our Varnex partners.

Now, there’s one issue with that. You might not be able to offer a complete solution to a customer. The risk is that a customer may have to go to someone else that has a broader portfolio or solution.

With our partners, we looked into what has to change in the Varnex community.

CP: Tell us more about Varnex 2.0.

MU: The outcome is to make Varnex bigger and better. About a year ago, we reactivated the “Solvs” on the technology side. We’d also like to have more Solvs, as each is specialized in a certain area. [Here are the Synnex technology Solvs: CollabSolv,

VisualSolv, MobilitySolv, SecurityNetSolv, UCSolv, PrintSolv, PowerSolv, ComponentSolv, and StorageSolv.] Here’s what the Solvs mean for partners. For example, the CollabSolv: What you find is a dedicated team, or business unit, with project managers, sales and service to support the implementation. The same goes for the other Solvs.

Together with the Varnex community, we decided that if you want to be a Varnex member in the future you have to be recommended on one of the Solvs. Then we know you’re a specialist for that Solv.

So if a Varnex member is approached by a customer for collaboration and this member is capable but specializes in another Solv, another Varnex member specialist can be brought in. The customer engagement is led by the initial partner. And Synnex guarantees this all works out and no one takes another member’s customer.

That’s the foundation of the change to Varnex 2.0.

CF: Is Varnex 2.0 ready to go?

MU: This is the announcement, and now we have more work to do. We already built out a dedicated team within Synnex who will work with partners. We’ll continue to make investments as Varnex 2.0 grows.

Some Varnex members are already prequalified as Varnex 2.0 members. They will also be more present in the market and we’ll do more marketing activities. There will be more vendor support, and Synnex will stand behind its Varnex 2.0 members. Customers won’t have to stray to find a more qualified partner.

We know that existing Varnex members are qualified because …