Strength in numbers: The Partnering Approach

Tool kits

Some vendors and dist­ributors encourage and enable VARs to connect with partners with complementary skills. Ingram Micro's Service Network database has about 100 fields, which members can use to find the closest match for their needs, said Kirk Robinson, vice president of channel marketing at the distributor, based in Santa Ana, Calif.

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Likewise, Tech Data's TechSelect program allows members to find collaborators, said Bob O'Malley, senior vice president of marketing until recently at the distributor, based in Clearwater, Fla.

Many vendors use opportunity registration and partner locators to protect deals and help solution providers find complementary skills.

IBM is building ecosystems based on vertical markets and specific technologies, and encouraging cross-pollination between specialists and regional players, said Chris Wong, IBM vice president of strategy and marketing for ISV and developer relations.

IBM, he said, no longer has a "hub-and-spoke-type relationship" with partners. "This is more about creating communities, nodes and networks," he said. "IBM is the facilitator. Of course we will put forth our views, but we're going to communicate rather than dictate."

IBM's Value Net Connections program has in-depth profiles of more than 3,700 partners, and about 500 are now creating partnerships and joint solutions, Wong said.

Value nets are teams of two or more IBM Business Partners that collaborate to create repeatable solutions, which are designed to lower sales costs, accelerate time to market and improve the potential for success, Wong said.

To date, more than 3,300 IBM Business Partners participate in Value Net activities and have created more than 350 repeatable customer solutions.

"In many cases they're coming together tactically for a specific engagement or project," Wong said, "but our goal is to drive more opportunities together with them as a joint solution."

Vendors also use social events such as cocktail parties and partner seminars to bring channel companies together. IBM hosts "speed partnering" events, with between 20 to 80 partners rotating in 8-minute intervals. "We actually had a lot of business result from this," said Wong.

For its part, Sage Software tapped its Regional Partner account managers to create a "dance card" of the go-to partner in a given area such as CRM or human resources, said Taylor Mac­donald, chief channel and strategy officer at the Atlanta-based vendor.

"Their goal was to fill out that score card and encourage relationships between people," Mac­donald said.

Sage also holds Alliance Building Boot Camps, one-day events that help cement partnerships, as well as Regional Partner Forums throughout the year. "We need to have done all the hard work before we go in front of the customer," said Macdonald. "We need to be finishing each other's sentences."

IBM is using technology to unite partners around the globe. Recently, partners in Europe, Japan and Detroit met virtually via the PartnerWorld Interactive Network's Collaboration Island, Wong said.

Using avatars, executives communicate and learn about each other's businesses and go to private virtual boardrooms if they wish to continue a more in-depth conversation.

"One partner wanted to rent space in an IBM virtual office," said Wong. "It's on the table to build a virtual office building."

Other vendors have recognized the opportunity to encourage partnerships and are beginning formal programs. Juniper Networks created an online opportunity-registration program that will scale to incorporate partner locator features, said Steve Pataky, vice president of worldwide channel development at the company, based in Sunnyvale, Calif. Juniper's JPartner program includes other vendors' products that are proven to work with its networking solutions, Pataky said.

Today, the company is investigating how to work with vendor partners to reward those solution providers that team up to sell multivendor solutions, he said.

"Can you, as a single vendor, reward your partners—those who integrate multivendor and multipartner solutions—better than those who resell your products?" Pataky asked. "That requires some vendor-to-vendor collaboration. We're all used to doing this with our own products; we just have to extend it."

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