Exclusive Interview: Talib Yousry, Senior Director Channels, Forcepoint

In a candid interaction with DQ Channels, Talib Yousry shared his insights on how Forcepoint is ensuring their channel ecosystem gets all kinds of support,  different steps Forcepoint is taking to equip the channel community with required awareness and knowledge of behaviour-based cloud security platform, GTM, and Partner programs.

You’ve been appointed as senior regional director of channels and alliances for the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ). What are your responsibilities and how are you driving cloud security solutions through the partner ecosystem looking at the current situation?

I joined Forcepoint at the beginning of the year with the responsibility of continuing to grow and develop our channel ecosystem. Our success is inextricably linked to the success of our channel and my main goal is to ensure our partners are enabled, supported, and motivated to be successful with our products which will, in turn, drive more business for Forcepoint.

Forcepoint is a cloud-first, hybrid ready organization and we see accelerated requirements for behavior-based cloud security as organizations transition to working remotely, creating a unique opportunity for our partners to help our existing customers secure their critical data and their employees wherever they may be. One of our strengths is that we can support on-premise, hybrid, or fully cloud-based solutions, all of which are available via the channel.

What is the strategy to engage partners and support channels in the current crisis industry is facing?

We are committed to support and invest in partners to make sure they are able to work through these challenging times. Our conversations with partners have increased to help them maintain business and we are working on a case by case basis with them to ensure they get the support they need. We are also investing time and money in developing our partners’ skill sets through training, enablement, and webinars.

Further, we have launched a number of campaigns to address specific customer needs at this time with an emphasis on protecting corporate data in an era of a remote workforce, growth in the cloud adoption, and, of course, looking at the human element of cybersecurity. These campaigns include attractive offers to help our partner community increase their sales.

I find that it’s business as usual for a lot of partners and they are looking at new ways of doing business. Through our combined efforts, the pipeline is building well.

Metro cities and tier 1 surely adds value to the Forcepoint Channel Ecosystem. But what about tier 2 and 3 cities? What are the steps Forcepoint is taking to reach beyond?

Forcepoint has been a leader in enterprise security in India for many years now. This year, our focus is also to expand into the mid-enterprise market. In this regard, we have invested to strengthen our channel team in India. We have hired dedicated channel managers for the west, the north and the south to drive engagement with a broader set of channel partners. We are in direct touch with the tier-1 and tier-2 cities partners alongside our distributors. While the tier-3 cities partners are managed by the distributors, our channel team is working closely with the distributors to deliver strong engagement for these channel partners.

What is Forcepoint’s strategy to help partners grow their business and drive value to capitalize on the opportunity presented by businesses going digital?

We are helping to drive value through digitization in two ways. First of all, given we sell a software-based security solution, it lends itself well to businesses going digital and indeed the integrated nature of our products allows our security solutions to sit across multiple different digital platforms.

Secondly, in these unprecedented times, digital routes to market have become critical and we are working closely with our partners to help make our solutions to market digitally.

As events are getting canceled and businesses are familiarizing themselves with WFH, at Forcepoint, how are you boosting the partner community, especially in India?

We are spending even more time with our partners, shifting our approaches to support their activities. Further, one of the positives of this virtual world is that training and enablement that was once limited to expensive face-to-face engagement is now offered far more frequently to far more partners via webinars, virtual training sessions, and virtual instructor-led partner SE workshops.

Lastly, are you facing any challenges while engaging partners? If yes, what are the initiatives to overcome them? If not, please share your mantra that worked for Forcepoint.

It took most of us a little time to get used to a fully virtual engagement, but we have become familiar with this form of engagement. We use video as much as we can to keep the personal touch to engagements, and sometimes, we have social as well as business based Zoom conferences. One exciting outcome of working from home is you get to see small insights into people’s personal lives and in some ways can get to know them a little better – it’s really nice when you are having a video call with a partner and their 3-year-old walks into their room!