A shout to VMware Embedded OEM Partners
Today, I’m honored to be recognized by our VMware Customer Experience and Success team for my efforts in supporting eOEM. However, building up to this day took a lot of effort and an a industrious sprit to ensure success for my partner. Inside of VMware, I became an internal advocate for the needs of our eOEM partners, and I’ll continue helping them through their challenges plus aligning them for success. They truly partner with you and help to ensure your success as much as theirs. In this blog are some of my thoughts around working with VMware eOEM and some secrets to my success.
For the past 11+ years I’ve been a Technical Account Manager (TAM) with VMware. From day 1 I was assigned a VMware Embedded OEM (eOEM) Partner and I’ve loved every minute of it. When I first started, inspiring the global industrial market to move into virtualization was no small task and while working with my eOEM Partner early on it was apparent they understood their customer at a very deep level. This was something I needed to master if I was going to be successful with eOEM customer. For the past 40+ years, my eOEM Partner has held an annual global industrial users group meeting. This event has helped to build a very loyal customer base. This event is very similar to VMUG in many ways and early on in my TAM assignment I knew this customer bond was extremely valuable. However, ensuring I understood their customers’ requirements and business objectives was the key to my success. I knew this event was an opportunity to learn as much as I could about industrial controls and their needs. When folks ask me about my first day with VMware, I like to tell them I was born at my partners event, meaning my first day with VMware was at their annual event. I was working the VMware booth talking about Industrial process and how it relates to VMware. I knew this was my opportunity to ask more questions to their customers then they asked of me. Additionally, during lunch breaks and nightly events I would always sit with folks I didn’t know and ask lots of questions. Sometimes it would be my partners employees or their customers, either way I would always push my boundaries to learn something new. Through event I started better understand their customer base and by leveraging this deep understanding of their business, I was able to help them become very successful in their market space. My eOEM Partner has been so pleased with my performance they have invited me back to their event every year since 2011 and now their customers ask for me by name.
Knowing your TAM customers business, ensuring support alignment, and being their best advocate are just a few examples of how I aligned my eOEM Partner for success. I put a focus on bringing the best value to our partner, helped them build a broad offering with our products, and in turn both companies have flourished. Additionally, having our efforts recognized helped to solidify the efforts that we both put into their product line. In 2017, we won two awards: Partner Innovation OEM Award and the TAM award for Emerging Trends and Technology. The team was presented the TAM award at VMworld 2017 by Pat Gelsinger.
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