A Simpler, Easier to understand partner program is the key to Success!

With market competition intensifying and business becoming more challenging for new customer acquisitions and engagement, classic partner programs are seen to be evolving. The exponential pace of change has created anxiety across the IT industry. Any information system upgrades for improved partner experiences should deliver accurate information, address the right issues, and demonstrate an understanding of partner experiences.

The changes vendors seek in partner programs ought to be realistic, scalable, and ensure that a system infrastructure is in place to incentivize partners wherever they operate globally. For instance, Nutanix has opted to completely revamp its channel program with a new Velocity program (mid-market-focused) and launched its Power to Partner program channel charter shortly after, with an emphasis on enabling partners’ sales and marketing, but with no revenue requirements for partners. 

Dell EMC, on the other hand, has made services revenue compulsory for partner program membership. Juniper Networks, Oracle, and Red Hat (being acquired by IBM) have built new specializations and programs aimed specifically at growing partner cloud business practices, while Cisco is embarking on a multi-year journey to shift all its partner programs and incentives towards subscription and lifecycle services. VMware is leveraging its partnership with AWS to recruit experienced cloud and software partners. To streamline partner processes, HPE Pointnext reorganized its 14 services rebate categories into four.

Customer experience is becoming an important metric. Cloud service provider vendors AWS, Google and Alibaba Cloud are ramping up investments in partner enablement, investing in partner training and growing their portfolio of vertical, solution, and workload partner competencies. As partners increasingly develop hybrid business models shifting towards software, subscription and services, incremental benefits can center around partner activities related to customer adoption and post-sales services.

Partners working with numerous vendors have little patience for complex changes and may feel forced when changes happen suddenly. Partner program leaders therefore should be compelled to build simplicity into partner programs by design, taking a grounded approach towards change at the same time. Otherwise, they will be forced into changing programs, and risk alienating key partners....Read More