Ridgefield Park, NJ– August 10, 2017 – Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (SEA) today announced key investments in its STEP Channel Partner Program for its Mobility, Professional Display and SSD Solutions. The STEP program — — or Samsung Team of Empowered Partners — helps partners drive greater demand, increase sales and serve customers more effectively. Samsung’s latest advancements for partners include an enhanced Training and Certification program, an expansion of its Marketing Concierge support, and a new channel program dedicated to accelerating mobile-first strategies.

“Our channel partners are a critical extension of Samsung’s sales force and we continually invest in their enablement to drive growth,” said Kevin Gilroy, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Samsung Electronics America. “Today’s advancements will raise our channel training, demand generation and mobility initiatives to a new level, providing partners with resources to gain deeper knowledge on Samsung solutions, and position themselves as go-to experts across vertical industries.”

Samsung’s vision for the channel focuses on four key areas: increasing demand through partners, accelerating knowledge transfer, driving partner profitability and simplifying platforms. As part of this strategy, Samsung today delivers:

  • New Training and Certification Tools: A new Samsung Training & Certification Program is available to all Samsung channel partners via an enhanced Samsung Business Academy (SBA) Web portal, enabling users to use a dashboard to track their training. This program is structured in a 3-tier format–Sales Specialist, Expert, and Master–enabling partners to become certified on Samsung’s enterprise mobility, professional display and SSD solutions, including third-party accreditations. Key elements of this program include:
    • Samsung Knox security reseller authorization through achievement of a Mobility sales specialist certification.
    • Accreditation with third party industry educational and trade associations, including InfoComm, which counts towards 1.5 CTS Certification renewal credits.
    • Vertical training modules for building expertise in mobility and IT across industries.
    • Ability to promote one’s business as a certified expert in Samsung products and solutions, upon training completion.
  • Expanded Demand Generation Services: Samsung today expands availability of its Marketing Concierge support to all registered partners, regardless of size. Previously only available to Samsung’s largest partners (Gold & Platinum), Marketing Concierge support now provides all partners fast access to third-party marketing platforms that provide tactical expertise for co-branded campaigns, reporting, and access to automated tools for online and social media marketing strategies. This is part of Samsung’s Marketing Hub, a one-stop shop for marketing resources for partners that builds awareness and demand fulfillment of Samsung solutions. Over the year, the Hub has doubled email sends and tripled social media posts by its partners.
  • Mobility Solution Provider Program: Samsung introduced a new Mobility Solution Provider Program (MSPP) dedicated to the recruitment of partners who can excel at developing next-generation mobility solutions around Samsung devices. Through this program, partners that meet set criteria receive lucrative benefits including sales and marketing resources, leads, volume incentive rebates, official listing in Samsung.com and more. This is part of Samsung’s focus on building mobile expertise in the channel, including a doubling of its channel team dedicated to mobile strategies.

A Samsung business partner who has used the STEP program’s enhanced Training and Certification tools is Insight, a leading provider of Intelligent Technology Solutions™ to organizations of all sizes. According to Bob Kane, SVP product management at Insight:

“At Insight, we believe technology is no longer just a part of the business, it’s becoming the business. We feel strongly about bringing the right solutions and partner products together, so clients can manage IT needs today and transform for what’s next. Samsung’s training and certification program empowers our teammates to offer better mobility solutions to our clients. It provides a simple way to grow our expertise in changing business environments. With faster access to training and the ability to gain deeper understanding about client needs, our partnership with Samsung opens up new opportunities to reach our clients where they want to be – anywhere, on mobile.”

The portal is located here. To learn more about getting started with the Samsung Training and Certification program, contact: prmadmin@sea.samsung.com