As part of the Amazon Consulting Partner Programs survey conducted late last year we asked vendors to rate their partner programs objectives for 2007 by order of importance. The top-ranked objective by far was “Partner Readiness.”

Besting the likes of perennial favorites “Ease of doing business” and “Partner Profitability,” “Partner Readiness” was a front runner for nearly half of the respondents. The category grabbed a 4 or 5 ranking for 80% of those surveyed (on an importance scale ranked 1 to 5).

But what does “Partner Readiness” really mean? The first step toward better understanding would be to distinguish the difference between readiness and enablement, terms often used interchangeably. We see them as having different, though related, meanings. Settling on a definition is worthwhile since vendors consider it a critical component of what they plan on providing for their partners this year. Let’s start by clearing up some confusion around terminology.

Along the continuum of being a “channel friendly” company and effectively engaging and empowering partners, the first step is to focus on your own channel readiness. This stage primarily applies to internally focused activities to ensure your own organization is ready to engage partners: i.e.

• Does the product have the proper documentation?


• Is the product easily packaged or bundled into SKUs?


• Is it easy to configure and order?


• Does the sales team structure support an indirect sales effort? Is their compensation aligned to this effort?


• Is the product easy to install and support?

The next step is partner readiness or the core training partners need to be able to sell and support your products and services.
This includes:

• Does the solution provider have the right qualifications to be a partner?


• Do they have experience in my market?


• Do they sell similar solutions?


• Are they successful with customers?
  
• Do they have the technical knowledge—the training and the certification to correctly position, sell, implement and support these products?

The third stage on the continuum of being a “channel friendly” company is partner enablement, which means providing the tools, materials and resources for the partners to be effective with your products. In this stage the vendor supplies the partner with the means, knowledge and opportunity to be effective.
For example:

• Do the partners have the marketing tools available to them?


• Are there field and corporate resources available to work along side the partners?


• Do the partners have access to pre-sales engineers? And post-sales support engineers?
  
• Can a partner quickly and easily develop a quote and source products for the customer, with the “right” pricing?

From the Vendor’s Perspective
Recently, several channel executives shared their companies’ perspective on partner enablement, among other topics, in a VARBusiness focus group. Their comments appear in the article, “Q&A: Channel Executives Take On the 80/20 Rule” dated March 19, 2007. [Find the article here.]

Lori Cook, VP of worldwide professional services, channels and alliances at BMC Software noted that BMC relies on feedback from their partners to help them develop the right tools and training. “Because our software product is complex and requires a great deal of knowledge to understand the portfolio around business service management, I created an advisory board. Partners give me constant feedback on what they need to get their jobs done and maximize their opportunities,” she said. “It revolves around continued support with education, both from a sales perspective and from a technical perspective, and around certification on our solution set and our products.”

For Doug Kennedy, VP of worldwide alliances and channels at Oracle, partner enablement is about paying attention to the market and then taking care of an enormous partner base.

“Enablement is a major thing for Oracle, because we've got hundreds of products and more than 19,000 partners,” he said. “I put a task force together about 16 months ago to dive into the requirements and what we were delivering for education. And we were delivering thousands of unique courses across the globe. I focused this task force on ensuring that the curricula are complete--for the partner to find out which type of courses they need based on what their discipline is.”

Enablement encompasses a number of partner-focused tools and support, said Frank Vitagliano, VP of worldwide channels and U.S. enterprise operations at Juniper Networks. “To me, enablement starts with the training and certification, but it's broader than just that. It includes presales and postsales support, and it includes things like pricing support, marketing support and just general enablement or engagement kinds of activities,” Vitagliano said.

From the Partner’s Perspective
Randy Day, President and CEO of Troy, Mich.-based SMB solution provider New Dimensions, has seen the shift in manufacturers’ approach to the market in recent months, paying more attention to partners who sell into the hot SMB space. He said he likes the vendors’ focus on “partner enablement” because of what it means to the success of his business.

“The SMB market is so huge, and the VAR channel has a strong foothold in it,” Day said. “It makes sense for [vendors] to try to penetrate SMB by enabling us with the resources and the right tools to successfully sell and to make sure the end user is satisfied.”

At Amazon Consulting, we envision the partner cycle moving another step forward, beginning with channel readiness, moving to partner enablement and ultimately realizing a level of partner empowerment overarching four pillars of support: skills enablement, sales support, marketing support and technical support. We believe that vendors can enable a partner by giving them tools, but “empowering” them to effectively utilize those tools is much more productive.