We are constantly striving to be your preferred vendor

Sep 1, 2023

When Eaton first began our channel journey more than 15 years ago, one of the fundamental cornerstones of our strategy was to become the vendor with whom partners love to do business. Striving to understand and meet your needs has always been top-of-mind in the development of our products, commercial policies and channel management efforts.

Working with Eaton is to your Advantage

This pledge is underscored by a variety of Power Advantage program components, such as the superior margins our products afford, and our commitment to resolving channel conflicts through the clear rules established in our Deal Registration program. Supplementing these measures is a true commitment to cultivating personal relationships through our team of field partner development managers and inside sales representatives who are assigned to partners and available to you at any time. Over the years, this strategy has been unmistakably successful; not only have partners rewarded us with increasing sales year after year, but with countless channel recognition awards, for which we can’t thank you enough.

Yet even the best relationships at times experience a bump in the road. We understand that the Tripp Lite acquisition in 2021 sparked some confusion in the channel – an unfortunate byproduct of positive progression is often unwelcome distractions and disruptions; after all, there’s a reason for dubbing the term growing pains.

Bigger market share, bigger challenges

The Tripp Lite acquisition enabled us to double our market share overnight, becoming an undisputed challenger in the physical infrastructure market (encompassing UPSs, rack PDUs, rack enclosures and cooling), as well as launching us into the highly competitive connectivity and peripherals market (which includes cables, KVMs, mounts, docking stations and surge suppressors). When integrating these two highly successful businesses, we took a very careful approach, taking ample time to thoroughly understand the basis for their successes and paving the way for future growth.

Our partners obviously had a lot of questions about what would happen next, if what they liked about each company would survive the integration, and if their partner development manager would still be in charge once everything was reorganized. While we recognize that partners are familiar with these times of uncertainty – as they watch many vendors experience them – these integrations often result in system changes that are necessary to cope with the size of the new combined businesses. During the transition, these changes can be very disruptive, as we learn new procedures and ways to perform the same tasks.

Full speed ahead

Eaton was not immune to these typical pitfalls, but thankfully all the transitory issues are now behind us. Over the past several weeks, we have paused to reflect on the abundance of positive developments we see on the other side of the growing pains. For Eaton channel partners, this means we are back on the offensive with new programs that are already resulting in gains in all our product categories. In addition, our quoting system is now much more efficient than our legacy systems, and we have been meeting our SLA commitments for Deal Registration approvals since the beginning of the year. Furthermore, our sales team is fully operational and available to serve the needs of our partners, and our positioning has been clarified and widely communicated to all our stakeholders.

Our ongoing dedication to the channel will be further demonstrated with the upcoming release of new, channel-friendly subscription services designed to create more recurring revenue streams, complement your hardware sales and strengthen your managed service practice. While other companies may take the easy route and sell these services directly to your end users, this is not our approach. We built our success on the trust of our channel partners, and that commitment today is as strong as it has ever been.

Eaton puts partner-first mindset into action

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