Blog

Collect the right data to identify the best PRM for your partnering goals

Does working for a high-tech company make you uniquely positioned to pick the perfect technology to support your channel strategy? Not really. The partner relationship management space is so busy, choosing between the overwhelming number of options can be daunting.

The what, when, why and how of rewarding partners at the point of influence

In our latest channel chief roundtable, we asked leading technology channel executives what was keeping them up at night. Amongst their answers of: ‘doing more with less,’ ‘marketplaces,’ ‘the big lay-off’ and the ‘slow but steady demise of the “tech alliance,”’ a big topic was the challenge of rewarding partners based on the influence they have on customers and where along the customer lifecycle that influence and value is realised. With the increasingly wider role partners play throughout the customer lifecycle, vendors should take a closer look at how to reward partners for their influence. We don’t have all the answers, but we have thoughts on how to get you on the right track.

What’s happening in partnering and what you should do about it.

My tradition of watching the annual channel predictions chat between Diane Krakora and Jay McBain with a large mug of glühwein didn’t change when I joined PartnerPath as our EMEA principal. What has changed is the depth of the notes I write. I used to scribble down some key quotes and throw them into conversations with peers and management to sound smart and revisit them when I had a decision to make on positive change for the year ahead. These days I refer to the topics these smart people pontificate (Diane loves that word), add my opinion, share with clients, and write a blog for you. On the webinar, they chatted for an hour, with a promise of more to come, and I homed in on a few exciting bits. As the partnering world continues to evolve, I’m happy to see three ways in which the channel is making progress inside organisations.

Customize your approach to European partners for better results

“Europe is like North America: the countries are just different states,” a young but enthusiastic new EMEA GM from America once said to me on his first day at his London office. Being a Brit, I smiled and made a comment about the inclement weather and advised that he should buy a brolly (umbrella).

It wasn’t the first (or last) time I heard an opinion or saw behaviour from colleagues in our industry suggesting that two major regions (Europe and North America) were the same. To most of you in our community (I hope), the news that Europe as a region is a different beast to North America – especially in terms of building an ecosystem of channel partners – is old news.

How to Update Your Program for the Next Generation of Partner Leaders

We speak so much about the next generation of partner programs, but what about the next generation of leaders inside the partner organisations? You know who I’m talking about. (Whisper: millennials.) Who are they? What do they need from vendor partner programs? Are they a changing force to be considered alongside customer buying trends and the transformation of partner engagement?

The misunderstood and often overlooked partner portal is (and always has been) the digital face of partner engagement. As decades have passed, technology platforms struggle to BE more and DO more to support partner growth These changes have made PRM (Partner Relationship Management) almost unrecognisable. The death of your parents’ PRM has given birth to a new digital experience to engage, empower and manage the ever-evolving partner ecosystem. Partner automation has become more impactful to vendors and partners, supporting the emergence of ecosystem orchestration.