The Cloud Era of Channel Success: Is Your Organization Partner-Ready?

by Diane Krakora – CEO

At the recent Channel Cloud Summit event, Diane Ruth, Executive Director of Business Development at Boomi (the Saas integration leader that was recently purchased by Dell), discussed their strategy for success with partners.

Ruth’s first point was vendors can increase their flexibility by aligning their go-to-market models with the partners’ business models: referral, resell, service bureau (only the partner has access to the platform, performing the full function of the solution for their customer) and OEM. Additionally, that the vendor should define the roles and responsibilities across these business models – clearly describing the interaction point between sales and pre-support, level 1 & 2 support, level 3 support and contract/billing/invoicing policies.

Ruth described Boomi’s partner management lifecycle which included:

• Discovery

• Partner Definition

• Trial/Proof of Concept – partner’s trial

• Negotiation – contract negotiations

• Execution – contract execution

• On Boarding Process

• Roll out Plan

• Formal business plan

• Project launch

• Training

• Certification

• Reference projects

• Partner success achieved

• Manage

Ruth went on to stress that partnering in the cloud might seem like a lot of work, but there are definitely business advantages to the relationship.  For one, she highlighted there were less controversial contracting process/terms without IP ownership or source code escrow. The partners appreciate sharing in the recurring revenue model, even if it is a challenge in the SI/Consulting space.

Ruth closed her presentation with a discussion of the pitfalls to partnering. She stressed that any vendor organization could face challenges in partnering in the cloud due to organizational alignment, unpredictable revenue projections, unanticipated costs, the partner’s time to market/extended ramp up, attrition of partner’s key stakeholders (having to start over with a new team), and the vendors resource constraints.

“If you do not seek out allies and helpers, then you will be isolated and weak “  Sun Tzu, the Art of War

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