Forcepoint in a rush to make a channel difference

Forcepoint is a company in a hurry to make life better for its partners having introduced a raft of enhancements over the last nine months. 

The firm rolled out a relaunched partner programme in April and has followed that with an accredited service partner programme, a fresh portal and the finishing touches are being applied to an MSP scheme. 

The vendor also rolled out a platinum level just a couple of weeks ago to make sure it could identify and reward its top performing partners. the top partner level will initially be made available to a limited number of partners over the next couple of months before being rolled out to greater numbers next year. Making the grade will trigger a raft of benefits including sales and marketing support and joint go to market initiatives. 

Spearheading a lot of those changes is Ben Richardson, head of channel EMEA at Forcepoint, and he said that the firm had a clear understanding that the channel was the best way to gain growth and although it still had things to learn it would rather bring as many innovations as it could to improve the life of partners. 

“We are going at it at a rate of knots to do this and most organisations will look to do it over a two year period, we are doing it in nine months,” he added “We are trying to get the job done and all the management team are behind it.” 

The reason for that speed is because the security player has identified a strong opportunity for tools that concentrate on the human interaction with data to highlight anomalies and potential threats. 

“We have got a really strong opportunity for partners,” he added “Customers are looking for help managing it and are wanting to work with someone who can deliver a solution and to be able to ask a partner, ‘how do you fix it? I want my headache to go away’,” he said. 

He added that the firm takes feedback from partners and has an open-door policy to ensure that there can be a dialogue with the channel around the changes that are introduced. 

Richardson said that there were several areas that the channel could go after as current opportunities, with more customers looking for assistance with their data protection. 

The first was around edge protection and the feeling is that this is a particularly good source of income for those pitching managed services; data protection and DLP continues to be in high demand; and finally, customers are looking for more simplicity and help managing their security estate and are attracted to those resellers that can help solve those headaches. 

The message for those partners that are weighing up their vendor relationships is that, “it’s a two-way relationship and we want to invest with partners that invest with us”. 

“We have got some really, really good partners, and we are on a journey and will learn and adapt as we go as we build up these long-term profitable relationships,” said Richardson.