Feet on the Street featuring Jay McBain

A partner ecosystem is a broader term for channels.  75% of world trade flows indirectly across all industries. Buying your car from a dealer, buying your TV from a retailer, buying your loaf of bread from a grocer, that’s what people think about when they think about channels. The average customer today has seven partners they trust. And only one of them shows up at that point of sale. It is important to consider before the point of sale, at the point of sale, beyond the point of sale, all the co-innovation that’s happening, value creation, the network effects. Partner Relationship Management solutions can help you define and serve your partner ecosystem.

This is the broader term known as partner ecosystems. Essentially, it is a set of partners that are not only showing up at that point of sale but across different points of value across the chain.

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A macro trend for partner onboarding is a top-down approach. Successful companies understand the value of a partner ecosystems and how they can’t run their business alone. Hence, loyalty is evolving to be the center of all onboarding methods and can be implemented through a Partner Relationship Management solution.  Partnerships are at the center of today’s business so the ability to scale recruitment is critical. Onboarding at scale can lack the human touch so automatic activation with hyper-personalization is becoming a key requirement.

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When partner onboarding with a Partner Relationship Management solution, organizations need to think how to scale. Some of the largest vendors in the world like Microsoft are recruiting and onboarding 400 new partners a day. Each of these partners are unique, whether it be partner type, location, specialization, or other attributes. Onboarding programs must be designed to move partners through the training and certification process while being highly personalized and guided by an automated concierge service.

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When designing an onboarding process through a Partner Relationship Management Platform, organizations must consider the consequential enablement, enablement, and performance management. Three trends are evolving on how to track and reward channel partners in a mixed partner ecosystem.

These include:

1. Hyper-personalization of the tracking and reward system so to ensure a rich and fulfilling experience for the partner
2. Moving to multipliers by maximising the value of a partnership and ensure that loyalty links directly to the economic value of the partnership.
3. Creation of point-based reward systems that value before, in the middle and after point of sale.

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When building a Partner Onboarding program with a Partner Relationship Management solution, enterprises must think globally. Cultures are not the only driver, but more practical issues such as taxes and compliance must be considered. However, at the same time, partner psychology and behavior rarely change. Loyalty is at the center of both, just personalized execution methods will vary upon partner persona. Digital business relationships occur at the moment level and companies must leverage automation to deliver rewards instantaneously.

Play Chapter 5

When building a Partner Onboarding program with a Partner Relationship Management solution, enterprises must think globally. Cultures are not the only driver, but more practical issues such as taxes and compliance must be considered. However, at the same time, partner psychology and behavior rarely change. Loyalty is at the center of both, just personalized execution methods will vary upon partner persona. Digital business relationships occur at the moment level and companies must leverage automation to deliver rewards instantaneously.

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Successful companies have learned to identify the opportunities of partners and the business model and not to squeeze it in to a one-fits-all approach. Regardless of participation types, channel partners can build their business around vendor relationships and the defined financial opportunity.

This can be laid out and communicated by a Partner Relationship Management solution Vendors must recognize that they don’t need partners to change their process and style to engage. They must co-exist, collaborate, communicate, co-innovate to drive customer value with as low friction as possible.

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Partner ecosystems are evolving, and vendors are looking to Partner Relationship Management solutions to implement digital pathways. Each pathway leads to different activities, partner incentives, and rewards. Expansion is moving from point of sales to point of value. Six swim lanes are evolving at the point of value. This includes multiple strategies at the customer and alliance level.

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When designing a Partner Onboarding program for an ecosystem, everyone needs to consider the customer journey. Successful companies will think about locations, swim lands, alliance partners, affiliates, and system integrators to bring them through the opportunity door.

When it comes to partner loyalty, this is not a single event. Engagement and success always happen and always evolves. 2023 is the year of operational and automation focus. Companies cannot achieve their financial targets alone. Ensuring partnerships are monitored, managed, and measured is key and hyper-personalized, so to ensure recruitment, engagement and loyalty. Ultimately trust and making numbers are the outcome.

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