Partnering for Business Success
To drive growth in technology areas like Data and AI, vendors often rely on business partners to supplement and accelerate solutioning, go-to-market and the creation of differentiated value-add services and offerings.
There is a symbiotic relation between partners and a vendor. Partners form part of an ecosystem that can drive additional value-add and growth, supplementing and enhancing a vendor’s strategy and vice versa. For example, the partner can benefit from reselling or OEMing a vendor’s strategic technologies as part of the partner’s services or solution offering. Partners are eager to win business and stay relevant to the major current and emerging technology trends. Simultaneously, the vendor can benefit through the partner’s reach into areas that previously eluded them or within which they did not possess the specialized domain skills necessary to penetrate a particular market.
From my own experiences, successful partnering requires trust, sharing responsibility, commitment, investment and risk. Partnering needs to be a win-win situation — a “give to get” for both parties. For example:
- Financial Incentives — reward-based, mutually beneficial and financially rewarding partnership with compounding benefits.
- Product Attach — resulting in architecture and consulting services and hopefully followed by implementation.
- Skills — building a trusted partner ecosystem to expand co-sell and billable delivery capacity. Validations and certifications can demonstrate trust in the partner which is often desired by clients.
- Engagements — successful engagements receiving high net promoter score (NPS) can help earn credits for more exclusive benefits later.
- References — influential stories that clients are willing to share about their experiences to help influence other clients.
Better Together
Vendors and partners together can create new OEM relationships to build new capabilities, fill skills gaps, and expand their relationships with clients across different geographies. The types of different IBM partners are outlined below:
· Global Strategic Partners that resell and OEM technology (sometimes bidirectional). These partners are typically closely aligned with our principal behaviors
· Global Elite Partner Program that help drives higher resell volumes focused on first-hand c-suite stakeholder contacts while expanding line of business (LOB) relationships
· Geo Partners — a generic term used to describe value-added distributors (VADs), value-added resellers (VARs), and systems integrators (Sis).
Talking with partners, simplifying a vendor’s portfolio to create more clarity and focus can greatly help the partner communicate and speak with confidence to prospects about a vendor’s value and strategy. It also helps the partner demonstrate their value-add and alignment within the bigger strategy.
From an IBM Data and AI Expert Labs perspective we see partnering as working as one team — Thinking Global, Acting Local to:
· Drive both IBM and partner Success through co-seller and delivery channels.
· Practice growth through regional services, sales and the delivery partner ecosystem as well as knowledge transfer, skills acquisition, and validation.
· Operate with excellence utilizing automation and tooling as well as accelerating onboarding and time to deployment.
I think of partners as an extension of IBM, not just in value-add skills and product offerings but also in their values, ethics and behavior as the too represent IBM. The ecosystem expands, or flips, as shown in figure #1.
Figure #1: Direct vs business partner led channel revenue streams.
Summary and Next Steps.
The expectation and potential benefits that surround AI has created interest and high demand for data and AI solutions across key industries and niche / specialized markets. As a major Data and AI vendor, IBM relies on partners to deliver additional value-add services and offerings and to extend our market reach. The IBM partner categories outlined above are under the umbrella of the IBM PartnerWorld Program. If you are interested in finding out more about our partners or are considering becoming an IBM partner click the links below for more information.