Whitepaper - Developing a Productive Partner Ecosystem.2014

Developing the Channel
Building a Productive Partner
Channel Ecosystem
A Point of View

| © Copyright 2013 Hitachi Consulting2
What do you aim to get out of the partner ecosystem?
Increase Revenue & Value
• Provides a sales force multiplier
• Align with Partners that create extra business value –
1+1=3
1
Increase Reach
• Serve customers in more regions, segments, and
geographies that the current FTE base could meet
2
Increase Relevance
• Increase market perception by more landed messages
to more customers
3
Increase Return on Investment
• Using influencers and partners to increase the market
exposure to your products
4
So…
 Does your organisation
achieve its objectives
with the ecosystem?
 Is it clear what $1
investment in the
channel will do?
 Do you know how to
flex the channel to
increase revenue?
 Do you know how your
channel compares to
competitors?

What we’ve seen at other places
• No idea where the revenue – which partners, which segments, when
• No connection of partner activity to the bottom line
• Are your partners selling on price rather than selling the value of the full service you offer?
• Are the aggregators eroding your margins?
Revenue & Value
• No idea if the partners are the right partners – for segment, geography, product
• Conflict between the Direct Sales Team & the Partner Team
Reach
• How do you engage the partner – as a relationship
• No idea how the channel partners compare with competitor ecosystems
• No idea if this partner ship is significant or committed to by the partner
• Lack of clarity of now partners can build value on top of the project
Relevance
• Mud sticks approach - “Let’s get as many resellers / aggregators as possible”
• The eco-system can be ‘lunch club’ or ‘frequent flyer programme’
• Lack of clarity of the goals of the channel
• Lack of continuous improvement – of the programme, the partners and the product mix by partners
Return on Investment

The Challenge with partner and alliance Programmes
Which
Partners?
Leveraging
marketing
spend
Leveraging the
sales team
Which
Complementary
Offerings?
Access to
Decision
Makers
Brand Alignment
Access to Right
Skills
Monitoring
progress
Do you have a partner
How do you increase Revenue, extend customer Reach, ensure
Relevance to customers, and increasing the Return of Investment of
each programme?

Managing the portfolio of partners is a complex task
Your Company
Customer
Sales Dimensions
- Product
- Geography
- Customer Segment
Marketing
- Direct
- Co-branded
- Through Partner
Service
- Direct
- White Label
- Third Line Support
- Consulting
Channel Support
- Alliance Manger Time
- Joint Sales/Mkting Funnel
- Privileged Access
- Documentation
- Training
- Investment Funding (PoC)
- Lower Cost Resources
Buying
Dimensions
- Product
- Geography
- Customer
Segment
- Customer
Lifecycle
Aggregator / Reseller (e.g. compare.com)
Aims to commoditise the market, selling on price and
equal comparisons
Professional Advisor (e.g. Big 4 / IFA)
Influences Sales. May sell directly or introduce another
partner.
Additional Value by Integration
Adds Product(s) with their own products & services to
increase value or specificity of the solution
Solution Developer / White label
Incorporates the product within their offering (often white
labelling the product)
Direct Sales Team
Why does the
customer
want to buy?
- A Valued
Solution
- Ease of
purchase
- Trust

Designing a Productive Partner/Channel ecosystem
Capability –
• Marketing
• Sales
• Service
• Delivery
Low
Low
Market Relevance
- Overall Market Share
- Overall Impact on Market
High
High
Growing
Influenced
revenue
Recruit
Develop
Ideal Partners : Optimise Reach
- More products
- More Segments
- More Locations
- More Revenue
Warning –
reputational risk
- Increase Capability
- Increase Revenue
Warning –
RoI Risk
- Increase Revenue
- Support market
relevance of
partner Optimise
Potential
Partner Pool

Partner Management Frame work
Where do I spent my £1 with my Partners? What is my ROI?
Partner Lifecycle Management
Data Driven Decision Making Alliance Management
Joint Marketing, Sales & Service
Joint Pipeline
(CRM)
Investment &
Incentive Monitoring
Communication
- e-mail
- Social Media
Training
Portal Management
- Web-site
- Social
Partner Dashboard
- Partner Performance
Resources
- Documentation
- Credentials
Budgeting and
Prioritisation
Recruitment
Framework
(New Partners)
- New Partners /
Competitive recruit
Partner Maturity
Development
- Sales / Delivery/
Services / Marketing
Partner Mgmt
- Levels of Mgmt
- Moving up / down
tier of support
Extension
Framework
(Existing Partners)
- new products /
segments / geog.
Ecosystem Review
- Market Potential
Ecosystem Strategy
- Match to Business
Strategy
Joint Planning
- Account Mapping
- Business Goals
Partner Marketing
- Joint Marketing
- Funded Marketing
Partner Sales
- Deal Registration
Pre-Sales Support
Partner Driven
Service Delivery
Service Delivery
Support
- 3rd Line support
Partner Capability &
Profiling
Target Setting
- Capacity

How to optimise a Productive Partner/Channel ecosystem
Measurement Alliance Management
Joint Marketing, Sales & ServiceBudgeting and
Prioritisation
1. Match your
strategies
• Review the
Ecosystem incentives
& composition and
compare against
business strategy.
• Validate the customer
& partner experience
across the partner
programme
5. Optimise the supporting infrastructure
• Assess current technology, data, and data
quality to measure and monitor success
2. Validate the ROI
• Review the Roi of this
channel against
others in the
company &
competitors
3. Build the Partner Lifecycle Framework
• Create a clear process for selection,
recruitment, development & disengagement of
partners
• Define the tools to support teach phase
4. Build the Partner Maturity approach
• Define the tools and resources to increase
Partner maturity in sales, marketing & service
6. “Make it Real”
• Create Partner specific action plans
• Drive a Connected Marketing & Sales process
– both through indirect & direct sales
• Review the incentives and behaviours of
alliance managers and match to strategy,
measurement & partner goals
7. Target the Partner support tools
• Assess current technology, data, and data
quality to measure and monitor success
• Review the relevance and impact of each
partner resource
• Embed continuous improvement into the
alliance programme

Hitachi Consulting Examples
Measurement Alliance Management
Joint Marketing, Sales & ServiceBudgeting and
Prioritisation
1. Match your
strategies
• Partner Channel
Review
• Roadmap for World
Class Marketers
• Hosting market
analysis
• Impact of off-
shoring on Client
Business
5. Optimise the supporting infrastructure
• Partner Data Share
• Systems Integrator Partner ‘Heatmap’
• Marketing Governance Implementation
• Partner Impact Reporting
• Implementation of optimised opportunity
management reporting
2. Validate the ROI
• Systems Integrator
Partner ‘Heatmap’
3. Build the Partner Lifecycle Framework
• Cloud Partner Development Framework
• Partner Prioritisation Framework
4. Build the Partner Maturity approach
• Partner Prioritisation Framework
• Partner Capability Evaluation & Planning
6. “Make it Real”
• Rollout of a Partner programme across
Western Europe
• Augmenting the Sales teams with Partner
Sales Teams
• Implementation of Connected Sales &
Marketing
• Coaching in Sales & Marketing Planning
• Implementation integrated programme for
product deployment to/with Partners
7. Target the Partner support tools
• Continuous Improvement – implementation
of learning circles
• Optimising Customer Communications
• Mid-Market Customer Renewals Project

Example of Similar Projects for one client
Building a Productive Partner Channel Ecosystem

Benefits:
 Dashboard built and managed
as a one-view of progress and
areas of concern
 Regular community calls for
all subs
 New relevant, up to date
material each week, driving
coaching and learning
opportunities
 SharePoint site developed to
facilitate learning and sharing
 Onsite workshops to help
prioritisation and effective
landing
Challenges:
■ The client was launching a new global partner alliance programme & each country in
the region needed to adapt the programme for their country specific partners.
■ Hitachi Consulting was engaged to drive economies of scale in delivering this new
programme by building a community of project managers across Western Europe to
drive a successful landing of the new partner programme across the region, including
best practice sharing and building a dashboard to measure success in each sub which
can be used as a single view on roll out status.
Solution:
■ Coordinate the roll out and facilitate country workshops to prioritise local partner
alliance programme implementation activities
■ Develop a project status dashboard and facilitate collaboration with a team SharePoint
site.
■ Develop “learning circles” to enable sharing and effective execution
■ Identify and share best practices
■ Facilitate local workshops to help prioritise activities associated with landing the new
programme most effectively
Global Software Company
Create a regional community to implement new
Partner Alliance Programme

Benefits:
 Increased visibility of partner
and competitor landscape
 More effective engagement
with the channel
 Recommendations for building
the recommended partner
base
 Best practices shared
 Cross & Up-sell opportunities
identified
 Purchase cycle strengths
identified
Challenges:
■ Given the limited resources available, the technical product team were looking for
opportunities to more formally engage with channel partner community and to identify
investment opportunities to leverage the channel to grow revenue.
Solution:
■ Hitachi Consulting ran an assessment across 60+ subsidiaries, including Current State
Assessment, Financial Analysis, SWOT Analysis, competitive Analysis, Partner
Prioritisation Framework, Partner Execution Assessment, and Partner Engagement.
■ With this information the technical product team had a picture of channel ROI and
potential investment areas, plus a model to coach and support each subsidiary.
Alliance Partner Channel Strategy
Recruit & Build Mode (high priority)
• Invest in these partners to grow and develop
• Share leads to evaluate success of closing deals
• Co-fund joint marketing campaigns
Execution Mode
• Focus and train sales, marketing and services organizations
to capture the revenue opportunity
• Monitor and reward Year on Year growth
• leads passed primarily to this group of partners
Deselect Mode
• Reduce investment & help ‘self-service’ engagement
Upgrade & Migrate Mode
• Need to work with partners to educate them on Developer
tools
• Look at ‘outsourcing’ developer tools sales to specialist
partners
Alliance Prioritisation Framework

Benefits:
 “This gives us the inside view
that we need to build the right
capacity and capabilities for
our partners. This Workshops
are the fundament for all
planning activities in the next
fiscal year.” Partner Sales
Lead
 “The Root Cause Workshops
were driven by good
discussions of which partners
to invest in to drive our
business to the next level.”
Partner Lead
Background:
■ The client has a number of data systems that provide historical information of partner performance,
of varying data quality, but no mechanism that assesses with partners where they need to improve.
Challenges :
■ The client was looking at focusing investments in the partner eco-system to help drive increased
revenue, market share, and perceptions. This required looking further than pure sales &
opportunity numbers into a qualitative assessment sales, marketing, delivery and product
knowledge.
Solution:
■ Hitachi Consulting built a SharePoint and InfoPath based survey targeted at specific partners, and
drove a process with the product teams to shape the survey
■ Using capabilities of SharePoint, provide real-time monitoring of the survey, and reporting,
connecting with quantitative data sources for additional insight
■ Run root-cause workshops with the product, and country teams to uncover the core issues if the
ecosystem was not meeting it’s potential for revenue and market share
■ Work with the regional and country teams to create an investment plan to take to the annual fiscal
planning process
Partner Capability Evaluation and Planning
Survey
Regional
Assessment
Country
Level Plans
Regional
Knowledge
Sharing
InfoPath PowerPivot PowerPoint SharePoint

Benefits:
 Increased Revenue
The data matching process
provides potential new customer
information, with additional
significant opportunities around
inactive/dormant customers
 Customer retention
An opportunity to increase
customer renewals and target x-
sell & up-sell opportunities within
existing customers
 Campaign alignment
Opportunity for the client and
Partner targeting to be more
consistently aligned
Challenges
■ Accompanying the B2B SME relationship programme there is a need to ensure that
partners involved with the client are aware and integrated into the same approach to
optimise the effectiveness of CRM.
The Solution
■ Hitachi Consulting were engaged to develop and project manage a pilot programme to
use a third party to match data between an alliance partner’s sales list and the client’s
one to identify potential renewal opportunities according to the relationship programme
lifecycle
Partner Impact Reporting
Customer
Alliance
Partner
Client
3RD Party

Benefits:
Sales
• Influence Revenue
• New Revenue
• Deployment
related revenue
• Meeting joint
business planning
targets
• Sales Pipeline Total
Commitment
• Join business
planning targets
• Total Marketing
Leads
• Total Number of
staff trained across
different products
• Existing training
• New training
Executional
Excellence
• Pipeline Accuracy
 The UK Partner & Alliance
team are able to allocate
funding and resources against
the partners which provide the
greatest return on investment.
 Partner account managers are
able to quickly slice and dice
and compare partner loyalty
through a self-service
SharePoint.
Solution:
■ Hitachi Consulting developed an SI Partner Heat Map that can be used to evaluate
individual SI partners – and stack rank SI partners against one another - via a
transparent set of criteria.
■ The criteria was identified, prioritised and defined through a series of interviews with
key stakeholders in the partner team. Following this they were assessed for data
availability and included to form a final set of measures.
■ Criteria included:
Global 500 Software Vendor
System Integrator Heatmap

Benefits:
 Increased sales pipeline –
target $6m for this segment
 Increased alliance partner
pipeline – for one partner
increasing their annual
turnover by 10%
 Highlighted the bottleneck of
telesales for covering
marketing, pipeline and
account management.
Solution:
■ Select key partners around category products to drive new pipeline
■ Engage customers through tele-sales to enable direct connection to partner and
release telesales time for other opportunities
Augmenting the sales team with selected
alliance partners
TARGET SOLUTIONS
TARGET PARTNER PROFILE
Product A Product B Product C Product C
Location
Industry
Specialism
Solution
Capability
Sales
Readiness
TARGET
CUSTOMERS
Customer Segment
Transactional
Purchase
No
Pipeline
Existing
Pipeline
Subscription Purchase
New
Customer
Renewals
CUSTOMER
Agree to talk and share data
with qualified partner
PARTNER
Engage customer to assess
their needs and provide
recommendations
Client
Introduction
Client’s Customers’ Benefit
 Improved Customer coverage and access
to product specific knowledge in SI Sales.
 Faster connection to partners
 Enhanced Customer service & Satisfaction
Client Benefit
 Improved market share & Compete
 Partner drives Sales and Deployment
 Focus on EA sales
 Improved Sales/Customer ratio from 1:125
to 1:15
Alliance Partner Benefits
 Partner Revenue;
 Demonstrate performance compared to
competitors;
 Net New Customers;
PLAN EXECUTE MEASURE

Whitepaper - Developing a Productive Partner Ecosystem.2014

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