By Ramdas S
McAfee India has announced its new partner engagement policy with several new programs. The company has also realigned its management team following the exit of Karthik Shahani, who joined RSA in April.
Wahab Yosoff, Vice President, India and South East Asia, based out of Singapore, will henceforth manage the India operations.
Ram Sunder Papineni will head the enterprise business based out of Delhi, while Ambarish Deshpande, based out of Mumbai, will head channels. Terence Gomes, who heads India sales, will assist Wahab.
The key element of McAfee’s new partner policies is the named account and deal registration program. “We have mapped close to 300 of our Indian customers and their requirements with our partners based on their strengths. Earlier, deal registration was limited to only a few partners, but now any partner can register an opportunity with us. We offer a 90-day window to the partner to close the deal from the date of its registration,” said Gavin Struthers, Director, Asia-Pacific Channels and Operations, McAfee.
The company has automated its back-end rebate and rewards process by setting up a separate microsite for its partners. It has also announced a new rewards program for the employees of partners. “The automation of the rewards program will ensure transparency and a faster claims process. The new rewards program will incentivize the pre-sales and post-sales professionals of our partners,” Struthers stated.
With these new initiatives, McAfee seems to have addressed many of the issues raised by partners in the recent CRN Channel Champions survey where they had highlighted the company’s lack of back-end systems for deal registration, the rewards program and customer management.
In the current fiscal, McAfee will increase the focus on its new security appliance and business compliance tools business. |