New World Skills and New World Partners

We recently discussed the changing and developing types of partners in emerging cloud business models. It’s becoming clear there are partners appearing, growing that are perhaps different from those many channel organisations have considered before. The developing space of partners with business and integration skills at all levels – not just the large consultancies or SIs – is becoming a topic more talked about, and it’s becoming more prevalent with the rise in SaaS in application markets, especially as we see more SaaS in vertical markets.

Business skills and technical skills: These partner types have true business and consulting skills. They can understand the business processes at a client, propose and implement a ‘solution’ to take on the business processes and wrap them around a SaaS implementation. The smart ones can integrate process and function across a set of businesses. Some conversations suggest the level of technical integration skills needed is allegedly less as there are simpler tools and techniques to accomplish this: systems architecture becomes more business process.

Whilst there is some truth in this there is also a continued need for technical skills. The technology has moved but the understanding of technology, architecture and integration is needed. Witness the partner programs companies like AWS have pulled together to drive the next generation of MSPs selling out AWS services. AWS are pushing relentlessly to train and technically enable their partners. They have a sales model, a technical training path and certification requirements, which sounds very ‘old world’ but is new-technology rich and directly applicable to their new world next-generation partner sets.

A conclusion here might be the best partners are ones with new technology and business skills to be able to build agile solutions for clients using the best of today’s developing technologies. Spotting these partners as they develop is one approach – though they may have decided to invest in vendor A before vendor B approaches them, tries and likely fails to recruit them. Creating an incubation program to raise up new partners (or migrate existing) is for some vendors like IBM and Oracle/Sun is an older but very relevant approach for today.

Finding or building the right partners: It still begs the question: who are the right partners to connect with? Are new needed, can they be incubated fast enough, are old migrating, can they be accelerated?

Many vendors believe they have enough partners today. Some others are looking for new (types of) partners, yet few can afford to invest in the heavy lifting required to find, attract, on-board and eventually activate partners especially if these partners are already committed to other vendor plays. Identifying the right prospects early with insights and prioritization is key. It’s possible to find partners emerging who work in these spaces: re-engineered legacy partners or born in the cloud. Attracting, incubating and nurturing these will be key. What can’t be presumed is that today’s partners will be right for tomorrow.

What differentiates the ones that will be successful? It might come down to the skills and capabilities of the people in the partners, and how they connect with the vendor(s) capabilities. I read a good description from Gavriella Schuster, Corporate VP at Microsoft which resonates well with my experience and is worth repeating here in summary:

1. “Differentiation”: vertical solutions, solution aggregation, breadth of portfolio, breadth in industry…. and many more

2. “55% of business buyers make buying decisions before talking to a salesperson”: partners need to be where the customers are, in their community and in their professional network with strong digital marketing and footprint.

3. “Profitable partners run their business like a factory”: they build repeatability, standardization and efficiency in every part of their business.

4. “Most importantly – focus on delivering customer lifetime value”: which speaks to the best partners working with their customers as trusted advisers continually putting the customer first.

New world partners today: These are good characteristics to assess partners today and tomorrow. I would add to that they have to have a real business acumen, a desire to develop and grow. Otherwise why are they in business and why would anyone work with them? And as we have discussed above, they have to have insightful business understanding, business process and technical consulting capabilities, be agile and innovative.

Most vendors know they have and will continue to have legacy partners – but they need some new blood and new thinking too. The existing skill-sets will not be where it’s at for tomorrow. Many vendors are now focusing on a small number of large partners: those that have the insight and resource to redirect their energies and build (or acquire) new world practices that will deliver today. Only a few vendors are considering incubating new partners, or better, incubation programs that generate new partner growth, though this could be a path to a strong future. Preference still seems to be to spot the rising stars and acquire.

We at bChannels are helping our clients today define what their future partnering needs will look like, and are finding and engaging these new partners with and for our clients. The truth is all of the above mix is requested and required. We are helping our clients understand incubation, new partner types, acquisition of new partners, and even migration of ‘old’.

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