Channel roles are changing and no longer as black and white as they used to be, eg ISV, SI, LOB Consultant, Reseller etc. These companies are taking on blended functions, including resale, development, LOB consulting, systems consulting, implementation etc. Most vendor partner programs don’t address the channel’s needs for more flexible engagement.
The stakes are high as it is now forecasted that 80% of vendor channel contribution will come from hybrid partners who embrace third platform as well as on-premise solutions and from born-in-the-cloud partners who have no or very limited connection to the legacy business that drove second platform businesses. These evolving and new partners do not want to work with inflexible, top-down, prescriptive programs but are increasingly demanding more agile and modular engagement models.
We are helping our vendor clients rethink the five foundations of partner go to market and market coverage, to support the new partner models and arrive at more flexible approaches for partners who may no longer fit into the conventional boxes of resale or services. This includes adapting:
- Demand Generation
- Influence
- Platform-based IP Creation
- Transactions
- Customer Management
Based on our experience, key considerations in driving this new ecosystem and making recombination possible are:
- Assess and define – Consider using a Persona approach based on “behavior” rather than “features”
- Evaluate relationships and connections, influence, and lines of control
- Understand the characteristics of the players, and which determine success/failure, and which can be leveraged to impact and drive change
At Digital Bridge we have tools to help you through this process. We are currently building assessment tools for many of our clients that present a compelling case about who to engage with and how, and define the required planning/engagement platforms and program structure/content to help drive new behavior – including adoption of the characteristics that make a partner company successful in the new Digital Environment.
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