Intel’s US Channel Chief To Lead New North America Partner Group: Exclusive

In an exclusive interview with CRN, Michael Green, general manager of Intel’s new North America partner scale group, says his top priorities are to grow the chipmaker’s business with partners and get his employees familiar with new roles as he pushes for greater efficiency within the semiconductor giant’s partner programs.

After becoming Intel’s U.S. channel chief nine months ago, Michael Green is taking on an expanded role as the leader of a new organization that will put him in charge of the chipmaker’s relationships with North American partners.

Intel exclusively told CRN that Green, a 25-year Intel veteran, will become general manager of the North America partner scale group next month and lead relationships with distributors, national solution providers, national systems integrators, global systems integrators and retailers based in the United States.

Green will report directly to Greg Ernst, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Americas sales organization and global accounts.

“I'm extremely excited,” Green told CRN in an interview Friday. “A lot of changes obviously [are] going on over here, but partners remain the most important part of our business. We do not exist without them, and it's our job to make sure that they're off being successful.”

Green’s fledgling organization is part of a new regional engagement model for partners that was announced earlier this month by Intel’s new global channel chief, Dave Guzzi. The goal is to standardize the channel role for each region, including North America, and provide more consistency for partners, especially those with an international presence.

Intel moved Green and Guzzi into their new channel leadership roles amid other changes the chipmaker recently made to partner resources and personnel. Those changes included a streamlined market development fund program, an undisclosed number of job cuts and a reduction in countries covered by partner investments.

The changes happened after Intel told employees in August that it would cut costs in the Sales and Marketing Group (SMG) by more than 35 percent by reducing headcount and simplifying programs, as CRN exclusively reported. The cuts and changes are part of a larger initiative by Intel to slash more than 15,000 jobs, or 15 percent of its total workforce, and over $10 million in costs in response to worsening financial conditions.

‘We Have To Get Back To Growing Our Business’

In his interview with CRN, Green said his top priorities are to grow Intel’s business with partners, get employees in his new North America partner scale group familiarized with new roles and prepare staff to implement changes coming to Intel’s partner programs.

“We have to get back to growing our business,” he said, pointing to opportunities the company sees with partners refreshing fleets of PCs and servers with its CPUs.

Green promised to ensure relationships with partners are mutually beneficial.

“The reality is, when our partners grow their business, we grow our business. And so through a full spectrum of either programs or product launches or the way we engage with our sales staff and then also engage with end customers, we must all grow and so that's priority number one,” he said.

On the personnel side, Green said his team “will have new individuals and roles that previously were not there.”

“We've got to get them up to speed. We've got to get them understanding who their new customers are and get them ready to go and make the changes that we're going to implement over the next month and a half,” he said.

A Push For Greater Efficiency In Partner Programs

Beyond the changes to partner resources and Intel’s channel leadership structure announced by Guzzi earlier this month, Green said the company is still working through other changes to its partner programs over the next several weeks.

“I will say our programs always scale with how our business is doing. And I think macroeconomically it has been a tougher couple of years than I think most expected, and so the programs have scaled with that. But like we've always done with our investments, our programs are scaled positively when the market starts to turn around,” he said.

While Green said there will be “very little change” to Intel’s broader channel strategy, he said the semiconductor giant must “get more efficient on how we go to market” and how the chipmaker runs its programs.

This push for greater efficiency will focus on market development funds, so-called “meet comp” opportunities where price adjustments are made in competitive bids as well as how Intel pays and engages with a partner’s “end sales force,” according to Green.

“There [are] talks of cost cutting and maybe some headcount reductions that were publicly made, but the reality is, we have to get more efficient with our customers. They feel it. We feel it. And we want to be an easier route to market—by working with Intel—[compared to] some of our competitors,” he said.

Disty Exec Thinks Green Can Bring More Balance To Programs

An executive at an Intel distribution partner said while he’s “saddened” by all the people who have left SMG due to job cuts, he believes the new North America channel leadership role is a great opportunity for Green to improve Intel’s work with partners.

“I like the idea of all of Mike having responsibility for all of the channel partners and all the different layers of how Intel ultimately goes to business,” said Kent Tibbils, vice president of marketing at Fremont, Calif.-based distributor ASI.

Tibbils said he’s hopeful that Green can address issues where there is an imbalance in how benefits like rebate programs and meet comp opportunities work with different partners.

“There's been imbalance between how those work and how those get processed. So one group of customers might get a different set of priorities, and then another group gets something different. That can create imbalance between different customers,” he said.

While Tibbils said he has discussed these issues with Green in the past, he thinks the Intel channel executive should have more sway to address them with the new role.

“I think he's going to have more capabilities to address these challenges,” Tibbils said.

With an undisclosed number of SMG employees leaving Intel and others taking on new partner-facing roles and responsibilities, Tibbils said ASI has faced some challenges in working with Intel over the past couple of months.

“There's been some issues with points of contact and understanding who you go to now for different things. And people's workloads are changing. Their responsibilities are changing. So they're going to have to go through this process of adjustment,” he said.

However, Tibbils said, Intel has gone through transitions like this before, and he believes changes like the creation of Green’s new North America team will bring positive change.

“We have confidence that once we get through this transition, things will be back to normal. This is a positive from my perspective,” he said.

Green’s New Role Comes Amid Other Channel Leadership Changes

With Green becoming general manager of the North America partner scale organization, he is taking on responsibilities for U.S.-based global systems integrators and retailers in addition to the national systems integrators, national solution providers and distributors he was already working with as Intel’s U.S. channel chief.

Green only became general manager of U.S. partner sales and programs in February after his predecessor, Jason Kimrey, was selected by Intel to lead the North America commercial and partner sales organization, which was a newly formed group at the time.

That group, whose partner functions have now been absorbed by Green’s North America partner scale team, had merged the U.S. channel scale and partners team Kimrey previously led with teams managing relationships with large U.S. enterprise customers, U.S. communications service providers as well as Canadian customers and partners.

Kimrey said he left Intel last month because he accepted “an early retirement opportunity.” The company had been offering voluntary buyouts and early retirement packages to employees as part of its first phase to reduce headcount by 15,000 people.

These shifts in Intel’s U.S. and North America channel leadership coincided with two changes to Intel’s global channel chief this year.

In January, Intel appointed Trevor Vickers to succeed John Kalvin as the general manager of the Global Partners and Support group. But Vickers’ tenure was cut short when Intel picked Guzzi, a three-year Intel veteran with decades of experience in solution provider leadership roles, to take over as vice president of global partners in October.

Vickers was moved to an undisclosed role within Intel, according to the company.

Prior to becoming U.S. channel chief in February, Green was general manager of Intel’s U.S. retail team for more than six years. Between those jobs and others in operations and pricing across his 25-year career at Intel, Green said he’s “never not had a customer-facing job,” which he sees as an asset for his new position.

“I've been working my entire career with customers and partners. I want to be their voice back internally in Intel, and I think we've set our team up to be the best it can possibly be to lead them,” he said.