Let’s dive deeper into one of the key themes discussed during our annual Ascent Conference in October. Watch exclusive sessions here.
Most companies have gone through some form of digital transformation at one point or another, as doing so offers great potential to improve their ability to win in the market. And one of the most revolutionary digital transformations is the partner ecosystem.
Here, VP Global Partnerships, Matt Gray, and Regional VP of Strategic Partnerships, Travis Cameron, of Tealium elaborate on leveraging partner ecosystems further.
The Power of Partnerships
Learning to harness the power of partnerships can help your business generate new leads and achieve maximum results. Partner ecosystems are all about creating strategic (and occasionally risky) partnerships, integrating your products or services into other platforms, and letting partners develop new solutions within yours. In order to maximize your success, a company must rethink how organizational and human systems are combined to foster new and evolving capabilities.
If you care about revenue, you have to care about the partner ecosystem as well. It provides insight that can be utilized by sales, marketing, and partnership teams. Most importantly, it helps improve customer experience, which increases a business’ revenue. Making the investment to learn how to leverage these partnerships often generates strong returns, making this worth your time and resources.
Partner Engagement
Often overlooked, partner engagement is a crucial part of a technology partnership strategy. When you’re able to integrate your product with complementary solutions from your partners, you won’t just enhance your product by making it a part of a bigger ecosystem, but also increase your brand exposure and sales reach. Partner engagement begins with targeting the right types of partners, such as:
- Technology Partners: This type of partner develops and markets SaaS solutions that improve and complement the SaaS vendor’s own.
- Solution Partners: Like the technology partners, solution partners also supplement SaaS solutions through a product or service.
- System Integrators: The role of system integrators is to offer deployment, customization, and integration within the company. These can have horizontal or vertical specialization and typically have relationships with the IT department and business leaders.
- Distributors: Marketplace capability is one of the greatest contributions of the distributors in the SaaS environment. They provide a platform to support resellers who are managing the SaaS solutions, like provisioning, billing, and vendor contracts.
- Resellers: To sell the service and capture a profit margin is the main goal of the resellers. Nonetheless, they can offer additional services, such as contract management, renewals, and billing.
Final Thoughts
In today’s SaaS market, customers expect your solution to perform seamlessly. It is no longer a matter of whose solution can provide the best user experience or include the most features; rather, it’s who has the most comprehensive environment and how easily it can be integrated with the rest of the solution that your customer needs. This paves the way for a new path to success — strategic integrations and alliances.
Whether you need assistance with workflow, collaboration, or even security, there will always be a SaaS vendor who matches your needs and can utilize what you offer.
Learn more about leveraging partner ecosystems in your business through this exclusive video:
Photo by Shridhar Gupta on Unsplash