CHANNEL CHIEF
As more and more companies look to progress their Digital
Transformation strategies, the channel has an important role to play
in guiding them through the process. As Vice President of Worldwide
Channels for Centrify, JOHN ANDREWS discusses the
responsibilities within his new role, his management philosophy and
Centrify’s relationship with channel partners.
What does your new position
as Vice President of Worldwide
Channels entail?
Primarily, the most important component
of a senior channel role is to achieve a
sustainable and increasing revenue stream
from a group of core, self-sufficient partners
and make those companies both valuable
and profitable to their customer base. This
requires a great deal of logistics, planning
and strategy. At Centrify for example, we
currently have several ongoing projects
which I have kicked off under the banner
‘Simply Centrify’ to make us easier to do
business with. From personal experience,
the thing partners fear the most is that
you’ll be too complicated to work with, so in
January we’ll be rolling out a new partner
portal with improved interconnectivity
and communication lines with our partner
network. We’ll also be revising a fairly dated
partner programme focusing on competency-
based rewards, online and self-paced
learning paths for everything from sales, pre-
sales and professional services and increased
focus on targeted market spend with our
channel. So, it’s a fairly expansive role but
ideally to be successful in the next 24 months
we should be able to look at the teams’
achievements and see a well-prepared, fully
enabled and productive channel that really
adds value to their customer base with high
level security discussion.
What was your previous role and
what did it involve?
Previously running EMEA channels and mid-
market sales was very much a scaled-down
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version of my new role. I can now tackle
some of the programmatic changes that are
required to enhance the Centrify channel
go-to market strategy.
John Andrews, VP of Worldwide Channels
for Centrify
We want our channel
to be the most
knowledgeable
player in the privilege
management space.
Can you explain how Centrify works
with channel partners?
In our partner programme revisions planned
for January, we’ll look to continue the
engagement with a small but focused group
of partners as well as develop our distribution
strategy to achieve maximum coverage and
support for the entire channel ecosystem.
What is your
management philosophy?
Trust and communication. I have a really
great team of people in our channel group
and alongside that I also have some excellent
people in supporting departments. I believe
the key to having staff go the extra mile
for one another is creating an environment
where communication is encouraged and
healthy. Open debate and discussion are
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