Q & A with Informatica's Channel Chief: Harry Gould

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PartnerPath Implementation
Informatica currently works with hundreds of partners globally through their program, INFORM. The company wanted to implement a secure, scalable, easy-to-use, and interactive set of online tools to effectively engage and empower partners to promote and sell Informatica’s products. The Web-based system, which they call beINFORMed assists in communications and collaboration with partners, giving them the ability to download the resources and tools necessary to sell Informatica solutions. Informatica also wanted to use this system to manage partner contracts and register partner sales opportunities. They were looking to automate partner program applications, as well as software product requests.

Informatica turned to Amazon Consulting to achieve their objectives selecting their PartnerPath technology. With a foundation built on partnering best practices gathered across years of working with leading technology companies and incorporating proven technology and open standards, Amazon Consulting’s PartnerPath suite of solutions provided a clear way to oversee the recruitment, engagement, motivation and management of partners for Informatica.
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CONSULTANT SPOTLIGHT

Grounghog Day: Professional Services and the Channel
Aren’t we Smart Enough to Solve this One?
By Beth Vanni, Director, Consulting Practice

Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe I’ve been in the high tech market focusing on partnering for over 20 years. Those days of wonder and discovery of my early 20’s when Microsoft was just coming on the scene, IBM had just announced the first personal computer and Unix was on the only game in town for “enterprise computing” seemed so fresh and new. Ironically enough, some of the most fundamental issues facing the channel at that time are still around 20+ years later (when I’m not so fresh and new anymore!) -- issues like what are the most efficient ways to get products delivered to customers and do distributors do enough to warrant their margins? Which channel is getting the best vendor pricing and how are they locking their competitors out by selling at cost? Should partners be only authorized to sell product regionally, or nationally? Should partners have to pay for vendor technical training or not?

One of my favorite of these “groundhog day’ recurring issues is the delivery of professional services and the role of the channel. In the mid 80’s, “professional services” for the channel were largely focused on break/fix contracts and annual support agreements. But, IBM Global Services and the big accounting firms were already building very sophisticated professional implementation services to help large businesses understand how to deploy personal computer software, hardware and networking products. Fast forward to 2008 when most technologies have gotten infinitely more complex and converged (think SOA software and VoIP) and there’s a very high dependency on successful P.S. implementation for customers to get the real value out of their IT investment. It’s interesting to explore what role the channel was expected to play then vs. today in the delivery of these services.

In the Amazon Consulting 2008 partner program study, there was a resounding response from our vendor community about the perceived importance of having P.S. delivery competency from their partner community – it was the third most important “value based” activity vendors are trying to reward in their programs this year. And partners continue to indicate that development of services offerings is fundamental to their business success and profitability – in a recent Ziff Davis study, 21% of partners indicated that new/incremental services sales were one of the top two things that would drive their profitability this coming year. BUT, when asked where vendors were actually applying dollars, focus and resources in their channel programs this year, managing services delivery conflict between their direct organizations and their partner community was nearly the last priority on the list !
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• 25 years in technology
• Led teams in technology marketing, business development and operations
• Specialty focus on channels and alliances strategies

• Sr. Director of Partner Strategy and Sales Operations, BEA
• Vice President. MSI Consulting

INDUSTRY RESEARCH

2008 Partner Programs Study Now Available!
Partners are generating a decreasing percentage of vendors’ overall revenues. The absolute dollar amount of sales partners are generating is increasing, but the contribution to the percentage of the overall revenue of the vendor is decreasing. This is a concerning trend for the channel since sales volume is still the primary way most IT vendors recognize and reward partners. Value-added benefits solution providers deliver such as technical certification and demand generation capabilities are increasingly recognized and rewarded by the respondents. However sales is still the primary reason vendors engage solution providers, and the percentage of overall sales produced by solution providers is shrinking.

Key initiatives for 2008 are focused around increasing sales through partner enablement activities and becoming easier to do business with. However it seems the ability for partners to attract, recruit, develop and retain talent is inhibiting their ability to grow their organizations to keep pace with the vendors’ growth. Vendors may be wise to focus on the increase partners’ capacity in addition to increasing their capabilities through sales and technical training.

Partner-to-partner collaboration is seen as a potential solution to address the increased capacity needs of partners. Collaborating with other solution providers helps partners expand their geography and extend their expertise.
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The full in-depth 24 page report is now available through our new PartnerG2 Intelligence service. Send an email to info@amazonconsulting.com to learn more.