News & Press Releases

“Ryan’s project management skill set and industry knowledge will help Davenport Group stay on track as we work to bring the best solutions to our customers,” said Alex Bauer, Vice President of Operations and Engineering. READ FULL ARTICLE

His technical skills, comprehensive training, and hardware knowledge will make him a valuable asset. Mr. Stabler’s work will ensure that Davenport Group can continue to focus on going above and beyond to meet the needs of their customers. READ FULL ARTICLE

“We are looking to expand our portfolio of service offerings as we continue to grow the company,” said Sonia St. Charles, Chief Executive Officer of Davenport Group. “Alex’s proven record of driving superior business results and leading transformations make him the absolute right fit for this role. We are more than pleased to welcome him to Davenport Group.” READ FULL ARTICLE

Sonia St. Charles grew up in a central Tennessee town so small that its residents were outnumbered by her first class at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. From there, though, St. Charles held a series of executive positions in human resources at companies like Deluxe Corp. and Paper Direct, and ran her own consulting firm before founding St. Paul, Minn.-based Davenport Group in 2001 with her husband, Paul Clifford. The decision to form Davenport came from the couple’s desire to get away from the constant travel their former jobs required, and St. Charles’ desire to take ownership of her career. “I was very successful in HR, but I got frustrated because I was executing other people’s ideas. Davenport has been my petri dish of doing it the way I want to and seeing what the impact is.

“We’re data center focused, but last year our No. 1 product was client,” St. Charles said. “We don’t lead with client ever, but when a customer says, ‘Hey, can we buy our laptops from you?’ We want them to keep thinking of us for that purchasing cycle. It’s good for us, it’s good for them, and it’s become a significant part of our business.” READ FULL ARTICLE

“It’s huge,” said Sonia St. Charles, CEO of Davenport Group, a national solution provider based in St. Paul, Minn. “By putting all of this into one place with quite a bit of collateral materials and resources, it makes it much easier for partners to go and find. It’s a really smart strategy.” The institute comprises eight courses for Dell EMC Platinum and Titanium partners, and seven courses for Gold partners, Cook said. “The courses are dedicated to enhancing [partners’] acumen around marketing, helping them scale their marketing awareness, scale their training,” she added. READ FULL ARTICLE

“You are integral to our business and to our go-to-market,” Dell said. “When we think about the evolution of our solutions and the capabilities that we have, you all play an enormous role in bringing those solutions out and making them real for our customers. It is an incredibly exciting time in IT right now.” READ FULL ARTICLE

“The Dell EMC partner program is a win-win for partners and allows us to continue to focus on growing our business” said Sonia St. Charles, CEO, Davenport Group. “The transparency and accessibility to a host of products and services focused all around the data center allows us to address multiple customer challenges and increases our earning potential with multiple paths to achieve tier status.”

Sonia St. Charles, CEO of Davenport Group, told The VAR Guy the new program lives up to its marketing promises of being simple, predictable and profitable. A Dell partner since 2008, St. Charles said that while the previous Dell program was very robust and generously rewarded sales activity focused on their storage, server and network products, its level of complexity was frustrating. “It was difficult to accurately predict your rebate level,” she said. “Dell EMC did a great job of listening to their channel partners and designing a program that addressed all of our concerns.”

Nevertheless, Dell EMC has included provisions in its program that make it easier for smaller partners to participate at higher levels of the channel program if they sell Dell EMC technologies exclusively. “We were pleasantly surprised by that,” said Sonia St. Charles, CEO of the Davenport Group. “We think there is a huge opportunity for Dell EMC in the market.” READ FULL ARTICLE

Sonia St. Charles, CEO of the Davenport Group, a St. Paul, Minn.-based solution provider that sits on the vendor’s partner advisory board, said she sees only upside to the new program even for smaller partners like Davenport Group. “We hadn’t anticipated that the rebate program would be nearly this rich, and I hadn’t conceived that they’d be able to level the playing field between a company my size and a much larger EMC solution provider,” she said. READ FULL ARTICLE

Sonia St. Charles, CEO of Dell EMC solution provider Davenport Group, St. Paul, Minn., applauded the move to put partners on notice that are not making the grade. That said, she stressed, it must be done fairly. “One of the mistakes companies make is to set out a program and then they don’t stick to the rules,” St. Charles said. “That’s where companies lose their credibility, but if they deem that these criteria are important and they’re going to measure partners against it, that’s a fair move. I do agree with that, as long as it’s fair and equitable. If there’s no way a partner can hit their revenue goal for the full year, that would be a safe measure.” READ FULL ARTICLE