Bridgepointe Technologies Announces Massive Rebrand: ‘Your Signal in the Noise’
… no longer the corporation’s go-to strategy.
“It’s probably not going to be a surprise to anybody in this room when I say that AT&T historically has always been a direct-first organization,” Hussain said. “Anytime we had gaps in the market from a coverage standpoint, we went ahead and staffed direct people. Anytime we were … trying to solve distribution challenges, we always went and staffed direct people. Anytime we launched an emerging product portfolio, we went ahead and staffed direct people.”
AT&T Business CEO Thaddeus Arroyo has been instrumental in reorienting the company’s go-to-market approach, which gives credence to Hussain’s declaration that AT&T is “doubling down on the channel.”
One of the changes most representative of the investment is ACC Business, the company’s alternative brand. Hussain told Channel Partners in December that ACC would increase its channel sales force by 50 percent. He reported Thursday that the program has officially finished filling those positions.
“You told me, ‘We love ACC. We love the leadership team. There’s a lot of trust in the marketplace. We can do more in this channel if you invest,'” Hussain told partners, regarding when he took over AT&T Partner Solutions in October of last year.
AT&T Partner Solutions also has unveiled multiple changes to its newer Partner Exchange program, but Hussain pointed to AT&T’s Alliance Channel making a particularly big pivot.
“Whereas I will characterize the other two programs and what we’re doing there as evolution, what we’re doing in Alliance is clearly a revolution,” he said.
The Kevin Leonard-led Alliance Channel ran a pilot in 2017 to survey how it could improve. According to Hussain, partners’ initial scores initially were negative, but increased by 60 points in six months. That’s a dramatic change. Information from the pilot helped the Alliance Channel roll out multiple enhancements, most notably adding the option for partners to earn residual commission income.
“We knew we were on to something,” Hussain said. “We quickly implemented all of those findings and launched the program with all of the enhancements.”
The “Your Signal in the Noise” event continues Friday with panels on UCaaS, hyperscale clouds and SD-WAN.
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