3 Secrets to Building a Global Alliance Program
Alliances can wield powerful results. But what do you do when you have dozens or even thousands of potential alliances?
How do you find those partners that are truly committed? How do you develop those partners into results-driven alliances that benefit the entire ecosystem?
We asked these questions to Jennifer Kerr, who’s worked at OpenText for over a decade, as Director of the Global Partner Program. Two to 3 of those years she spent developing the company’s “2.0” GPP plan. How well has her 2.0 program performed? Well, she’s been promoted to Vice President of Global Channels & Alliances.
We caught up with Jennifer at the SAPPHIRE NOW event in Orlando to ask her how she did it. She gave us her insightful tips on building a quality network that drives win-win results for the whole ecosystem. Her secrets are powerful.
You can’t be everywhere.
In Jennifer’s time at OpenText, coupled with her previous experience at TrueContext and BlackBerry, she’s come to understand something: You can’t be everywhere.
OpenText is a full-scale EIM SaaS provider, with over 10,000 employees worldwide and over 1,200 partners. It’s the largest software company in Canada, but is operating on five continents. Simply put, you need resellpartners, GSI partners, and installation partners to successfully operate in such a diverse network.
From 20 programs, to one unified approach.
Jennifer joined OpenText as the Director of Global Partner Program. During her time there, she saw acquisition after acquisition, each one bringing a list of alliances and partner programs. The growing list of alliances and programs created a challenge.
She had to align all the alliances, determine those creating the most value, and develop a unified program that could be used throughout the entire global network.
So, her team spent the next two to three years developing and rolling out the Global Partner Program 2.0.
Global Partner Program, 2.0.
In this plan, Jennifer uses different metrics for different types of partners to ensure OpenText is driving the right behaviors for each type. She broke the program down into three categories:
- Revenue. Every partner is measured in terms of revenue. However, how that revenue is measured, varies depending on the type of partner. Resellers are measured on resell revenue, whereas service partners are measured on the co-selling benefit to OpenText.
- Training and certifications: As a forward-facing piece of your network, alliances are representing your company to customers. You want to ensure all your alliances are knowledgeable experts and aligned with your company and its products. Jennifer focuses on ensuring each category of partner has the training and certification to represent OpenText: For service partners, this includes technical certifications — whereas with resellers — this category focuses more on the value prop side.
- Loyalty points: This is a unique process implemented by Jennifer. Partners are awarded for behaviors they should be doing: attending webinars, certifications, placing OpenText’s logo on the partner’s website, etc. The points can be used for additional training and certifications, or for attending OpenText conferences.
This third layer of the GPP 2.0 Plan allows OpenText to keep partners who are worth investing in, but may have missed a couple deals. Sales cycles in the industry can last 12 months, Jennifer said, and in the beginning, there is a learning curve.
So, by giving each partner all three metrics, revenue, training and certifications, and loyalty points, they can still achieve two out of three, even without the revenue piece. In this case, Jennifer said the partner may still be valuable, and they aren’t worth severing the relationship over a couple missed deals — so if they are performing in the other two categories, OpenText can keep the partner while fostering a growth in revenue.
Have the right partners, not just the most partners.
One piece of advice from Jennifer: It’s not about the number of partners.
At one point, OpenText had north of 5,000 partners, many of which were acquired through company acquisitions. Many of those had signed a contract once upon a time, or simply clicked a button on some website to become a partner. They simply weren’t all truly invested. Jennifer has taken that 5,000 partnerships down to 1,200 of the right partners.
Last thought: Alliances are mini organizations within the larger organism.
Jennifer has her own marketing team, contracts team, admin team, processing team, and training team — all just for the partners.
To her, an alliance leader is running a miniature version of the larger company, and this is what’s so exciting about her job.
You come into contact with a variety of different individuals in different organizations — in different departments — and you start to understand businesses outside of just your own. To Jennifer, no day is boring, no day is the same, and it’s always challenging. This makes it all the easier to understand why Jennifer isn’t just a passive observer, but a true alliance ace.
To contact the host, Chip Rodgers, with topic ideas, suggest a guest, or join the conversation about alliances, he can be reached by:
- Email: chip@workspan.com
- Twitter: @chiprodgers
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chiprodgers
And don’t forget to listen and subscribe to the Alliance Aces Podcast, or visit our dedicated Alliance Aces page.
