Orange unveils new channel-partner programme Tweet

Announced at the Orange Indirect Business Channel Conference held in London, the Orange Partner Programme demonstrates a renewed and refreshed commitment to the Indirect channel, with particular focus on the business and SME dealerships. The new scheme will launch at the beginning of April, and builds on Orange’s growing momentum gained in 2009, which saw record customer additions in Q4 2009 through both Direct and Indirect channels.

The Orange Partner Programme has the following tiers:

* Approved Orange Partner: Entry point for dealers. Distributors will be key to introducing and gaining accreditation for their key Orange dealers.
* Specialist Partner: Evolution of the existing Federated Dealers scheme. Federated dealers will now become Orange Specialist (Business) Partners, and operate renewed trading agreements, targets and objectives.
* Principal Partner: Highest tier status, reserved for Orange Specialist Partners committed to almost exclusive selling of Orange, and with key joint growth plans in place.

In recognising the loyalty and commitment from the dealers and distributors in the Orange Partner Programme, Orange will in turn be offering all partners access to enhanced marketing, sales and service support, as well as new products and tools to improve communication around reporting and performance tracking.

Orange will also be extending the product range it offers its partners to help them meet the needs of their business customers. From Q3, Orange Partners in the Indirect channel will be able to sell Managed VPNs to businesses, as well as offer Orange Wirefree Extension, helping office workers to access business applications safely and securely from outside the office, and reducing company call rates.

Orange has also announced its intention to increase levels of revenue sharing, to encourage high value, long term relationships with customers. This increased revenue share over time enables Orange to reward those Partners able to introduce and retain the more valuable longer term customers. Whilst exact details are not being made public at this stage, Orange are aiming to reveal the new revenue share level by July 2010.

In recognising the need for dealers to upgrade customers directly, Orange will also be providing its dealers with enhanced customer insight to help them tailor offers at the point of upgrade.

Guillaume Van Gaver, Vice President Sales and Loyalty, Orange UK said “We have momentum, and we need to sustain this if we are to achieve our ambition of becoming the leading network partner in the Indirect Business channel. That’s why we are giving a renewed focus to the channel, and launching a new and improved Partner Programme which will deliver long term value for us all so that we can achieve our goals together. ”

Orange will also be moving its monthly price book to a quarterly basis which will help facilitate work through longer sales cycles and ease the planning process.

About Orange UK
Orange is the key brand of the France Telecom Group, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. With 131.8 million customers, the Orange brand now covers Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the Group operates.

In the UK, Orange provides high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population, and 3G coverage to more than 93%. At the end of December 2009, Orange had more than 17.4 million customers in the UK – 16.5 million active mobile customers and approximately 900,000 fixed line internet customers.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Personal Communications Services Limited.

For more information please call the Orange Press Office 0870 3731500, or visit www.orange.co.uk/newsroom

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