Introducing the Chief Ecosystem Officer

Developing an ecosystem is a key strategy that should be a top three priority for a Chief Executive Officer. This is so important; I’m borrowing the CEO acronym.

**I thought about using the title Chief Partner Ecosystem Officer, but I was concerned the acronym may draw a cease-and-desist letter from a certain golden robot in a very famous movie franchise.**

All kidding aside, a vibrant ecosystem, designed and executed with proper intent, can be a major advantage for organizations. There are many types of partnerships and partners will touch multiple points of the organization.

Here are three key drivers supporting that premise:

• Partnerships enhance the breadth and depth of your product and technical capabilities.

• Ecosystem partners grant access to adjacent markets, geographic and vertical.

• Properly building and nurturing a multi-pronged ecosystem approach increases revenue while decreasing internal costs.

Partnerships enhance the breadth and depth of your product and technical capabilities.

Building a technology ecosystem enables your product and engineering resources to focus on core capabilities that differentiate your offering from the competition. Trying to build proprietary, black-box offerings that compete with other available solutions does not make you more competitive, it makes you more siloed. Partnering with hardware (devices, sensors, compute, etc.), software, and data ops partners, at a minimum, lets you not only leverage their expertise, but potentially build joint campaigns and go-to-market that promotes trust and growth.

Ecosystem partners grant access to adjacent markets, geographic and vertical.

The right channel strategy will help you launch into adjacent geographic and vertical markets. It can be time-consuming and costly to bring in new resources in other parts of the world or even bringing in a new team to support a vertical that isn’t your team’s area of expertise. Whether it’s knowing their business language (or regional/national one), being able to diagnose problems quickly, or offer up tested solutions, partnering with trusted members of these respective communities gives you great access. It also helps build your credibility and trust by working with companies that already have a reputation in the given area. Clearly, you need to check out the partners to make sure they align with your mission and values, and doing so will give you a better chance of having someone to drive market share in an area that you may not easily experience success on your own.

Properly building and nurturing a multi-pronged ecosystem approach increases revenue while decreasing internal costs.

Building a comprehensive ecosystem portfolio that addresses technology, channel, and integration, at a minimum, you’ll want to review capabilities with the functional leaders of those areas to better understand where they’re strong, where they may want support, and areas they do not plan to venture. A good partnership has the element of a Venn diagram possessing some overlap, but a good deal of independent expertise. If your solution lives at the edge and talks to several machines, but you don’t possess strong cybersecurity credentials in your product, partnering can help remove objections by customer IT and business leaders without impacting your opportunity to work with that customer. If you’ve never done data cleansing on time-series data, working with a data ops partner can help transform customer data to drive far greater value. Yes, you can build these capabilities, but that requires resources and time. Plugging in capable partners allows you to overcome objections, maximize revenue opportunity, and do so at a far lower cost.

A one size fits all answer doesn’t exist as to where the ecosystem leader should sit within an organization. Depending on how your leadership team is comprised, it could be directly under the CEO. If revenue partnerships are your primary focus, under the CRO or head of Sales could be your ticket. Because partnerships are truly cross-functional, a Chief Ecosystem Officer may look more like a CEO or COO covering multiple functions within their remit. If you’re building a comprehensive program across technology, channel, integration, etc., having a leader where those programs converge drives more effective results for customers, partners, and your team.

Regardless of where your ecosystem leader sits, make sure they’re sitting at the leadership table to help drive the strategy and execution oriented on strong, sustainable, and collaborative growth.