What do you do if your Partnerships lack effective collaboration due to outdated technology?

There has been an absolute explosion of tools that can help drive your partnership. That also means you have a challenge in clearly defining not only your needs but also how your program's platform aligns with the strategy you are developing. What is clear is that partner programs are very different from direct sales teams, but those CRM platforms and processes are essential starting points for determining your program's requirements.

If your channel partnerships aren't working well because of old technology, it's important to fix it fast. First, figure out exactly what's causing the problem with the technology. Then, look for newer and better tools to replace the old ones. Investing in good technology can help your partners communicate better, work more efficiently and get better results together.

I would advise setting up a functional architecture for your program with key capabilities, so you can look at each tool or module and asses where it fits in your approach to building a platform for your program.

Plan to incorporate change management into your assessment and implementation efforts. You may bring new processes and capabilities to the table, but if no one uses them after the rollout, you will be significantly challenged. I recommend a cross-functional team to help assess your capabilities and how you should best implement them.

Make sure you establish metrics and report on new capabilities so you can identify potential gaps in your rollout. For example, how many partners access a new PRM, what do they download, and what training courses are not utilized? This can lead to a useful feedback loop to improve content or point to difficult-to-use collaboration tools.

In my experience with scaleups technology has not been a leading issue in partnerships. The main issues are mostly within: - the design of the partner program - the execution of the partner program (expectation setting, goal definition, follow-up, 1:1 enablement, relationship building) Technology definitely plays a role, but the problems usually lie somewhere else.

Effective collaboration in a Partnership is based more on whether the program is suited to the partner. Are you asking the right things of the partner and are you investing what the partner needs to feel successful in your ecosystem and partner program? These are the questions to ask, and then adoption of partner tech will fall into place.

Based on my experience, Partner tools are to greater extend simplify the implementation of partner programs through smart collaboration. But on a First place you should have designed right Partner Program which adds qualitative and quantitative values for Partner. For Collaboration you can pick and choose various good to pocket options in the early stage of Partner Programs.