IBM has announced a new initiative designed to help Business Partners increase their revenues while better serving the needs of their customers. A first-of-its-kind initiative, Grow Your Business with IBM Software, provides specific cross brand sales scenarios across Software Groups' vast product portfolio. The tool facilitates cost effective growth by recommending scenarios that utilize Business Partners' existing areas of expertise and available skills.

Companies today face many challenges with responding to increasing competition due to limited practice areas, skill sets and tight IT budgets. These companies are also facing the challenge of evolving customer needs in a global economy. The Grow Your Business with IBM Software initiative reaffirms IBM's commitment to serving both the large enterprise and SMB market around the world through a strong and profitable channel.

With this initiative, Business Partners can now gain access to an online analysis of software products, descriptions of their business value and provide an instant estimate of their return on investment. Grow Your Business aggregates all of the information Business Partners need in one place which simplifies the search process for them to find exactly what they are looking for and help them save time. The initiative also enables partners to view a vast software portfolio, allowing them to identify synergistic growth opportunities and necessary skills to implement new software solutions, not only for their existing customer base, but also for new customers.

"Our goal with this new initiative is to simplify the process of how our Business Partners work with IBM so they can focus more of their time selling to their customers and less time navigating through IBM's vast portfolio of products," said Michael Gerentine, Vice President IBM Small & Medium Business and Channel Strategy. "Grow Your Business will continue to build loyalty within IBM's ecosystem and raise the revenue streams of our Business Partners who are rapidly deploying IBM's software products to their customers."

With Grow Your Business with IBM Software, partners can take advantage of:

• An online guide that provides business partners with more than 200 marketing and sales materials including demos and webcasts that showcase how companies can generate revenue with minimal yet strategic IT investments.

   

   

• Dedicated IBM experts who will provide council on investment decisions and choices best suited for their business.

   

A customized breakdown of the business value and estimated ROI from implementing each product. IBM has piloted this initiative with more than 20 Business Partners, all of which have realized the impact that this tool can have on their bottom line. For example, Pengrine, an IBM Business Partner that generally implements IBM's WebSphere software, will be able to learn more about Tivoli and Lotus solutions that, in conjunction with their WebSphere solutions, can benefit their customers. Through Grow Your Business, Pengrine is able to estimate their ROI from each sales scenario, determine the level of technical training required and find the tools to get started.

"As a result of this new initiative, we anticipate our business to grow by 10 to 20 percent over the next year," said Satish Jipster, president and CEO of Pengrine. "Grow Your Business allows us to work closely with IBM experts to learn more about solutions that can increase our customers ROI and literally grow their businesses."

Partners can now view 60 cross-brand sales scenarios from over 50 software products across the Lotus, Tivoli, Rational, WebSphere and Information Management brands as well as hardware. Based on the scenarios, the partner can then evaluate market need, investment, skill/resource requirements and engagement resources that will help their customers achieve growth.

For more information on IBM Grow Your Business with IBM software visit: Grow Your Business.

For more information on IBM PartnerWorld visit: Partner World.