London-based D-Link Europe has been evolving its Partner+ programme by revamping its partners' portal and integrating in it more training and marketing tools available to all its partners, whatever their certification level.

"The feedback from the existing countries is very good," VP Enterprises Solutions for D-Link Europe, Nigel Moulton told IT Europa. "The amount of material available is now greater than it was before and we're able to leverage much better some of the material that we produce, either centrally in the UK for use in all of our European countries, or when we take material from D-Link USA or D-Link in Taiwan, again it's now much easier and much more consistent for us to be able to deliver this material across all European countries in the same time and the same quality."

The Partner+ programme operates in all European countries where D-Link sells to its customers, the objective was to have a set of sales tools and a place where reseller partners can go to get value from doing business with D-Link. Already existing in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and Czech Republic since 2007, it was launched in the beginning of the year in the UK and Nordic countries - Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland - and has been refreshed in all countries.

"So this is a central portal that's run for D-Link in all of Europe, so all of the campaigns are standardised and it's the same material that's available everywhere," explained Moulton. Included in it are currently three self-certification training programmes that the partner can sign in for - Ethernet switching, Wireless LAN and Security. There are also a number of special promotional activities that D-Link runs on a quarterly basis available on that site, as well as a number of specialists' sales tools that can in some cases allow partners to get extra rebates. And also, partners can do some sort of co-branded marketing with D-Link.

"Partners find it very simple to navigate, they see benefits in the sales tools that we produce for them, and they feel more aligned with D-Link because it's now easier for them to get training on our products as well as they find it easier to take advantage of the promotions we make available", continued Moulton.

And "In 2010, we will do a lot more with the partner programme. We'll add more functionalities that I cannot disclose yet, but during the course of the next three to six months, we will add two significant sales and marketing tools to the site," he concluded.

Specialist of "Building networks for People" since 1986, and second behind Cisco in the LAN market (with 21% of the market share), D-Link's solutions answers the needs of both SMEs and big enterprises, as well as consumers, and it counts 20 offices in Europe. "Across Europe, D-Link has been doing very well, we've actually grown 2-3%. Most of the countries that I track have seen our market share increase, particularly in France, we've had some very good success in France in the Ethernet switching and the Wireless place. And when we compare ourselves to some of our major competitors, I think we find ourselves in a good strong position ready to go in 2010."

www.dlink.com