Ex-HP Exec Out To Build Intermec's Channel

The Everett, Wash.-based AIDC vendor has been quietly building up its channel chops over the past few years. But Intermec recently kicked its efforts up a notch with the addition of Jim McDonnell, a veteran of Hewlett-Packard's award-winning Solution Partners Organization (SPO) who most recently served as vice president of global sales in the computing giant's Enterprise Storage, Servers and Networking (ESSN) Group.

We recently spoke with McDonnell, who last week was named Intermec's senior vice president of global sales, to discuss how he plans to help his new company develop its channel, what sort of partners he's looking for, and more.

Intermec is a company that's been around for quite some time, but it certainly looks like it's making a strong, new push to develop a broader partner channel. Can you talk a bit about those plans and also about how your experience with sales and in the channel organization at HP is going to be brought to bear on that effort?

Intermec about two years ago began the shift from primarily a direct-driven sales motion to a partner-centric strategy. That strategy's been well in hand for a couple years. The difference is what you're going to see later this year in February, when we're going to have a partner conference in Orlando, where we're going to announce some major changes in our programs to make the whole Intermec go-to-market and sales motions far more partner-centric than they are today. Now as far as I'm concerned, clearly one of the reasons I was recruited for this role is that I have many years of deep channel experience in the IT industry.

Can you give us some more insight on the types of channel partners Intermec will be looking to recruit going forward? Are we talking more traditional PC-based system integrators or solution providers?

Essentially we're looking for partners from anywhere. It can be traditional IT guys, whether they're systems and servers, PC-type people, but traditionally it's been more around system integrator partners who have been very focused on this part of the marketplace and who can provide the integration for the customers, can provide the software and installation and configuration as well as support. So it's really more of a value-add activity than what you would see in a volume PC and printer reselling business.

One of the attractions for potential partners has got to be the numbers of verticals and sectors that Intermec touches. There are a lot of different opportunities in growth sectors for Intermec, it seems to me.

One of the reasons I'm here is that Intermec is really a growth story. The market, as we get out of the current downturn this year, as the industries that we support begin to grow again, and with our strong position with our products and some of the capabilities that we've introduced in the last year, is really going to lead us to a lot of upside and allow us to take market share. That coupled with our, if you will, doubling down on our partner strategy and programs, well, that's why I'm here, because I see such a large amount of upside.