By: Dmitri S. Novomeiski, Associate Vice President, LTIMindtree

Channel partner strategy is an essential growth vector for many organizations across industries. While  direct-to-consumer is shaping how companies do business, they still have to rely on  third-party networks to get products and services to the market. The right adaptive infrastructure to support partner engagement is essential; and extends expectations of the consumer marketplace to channel and affiliate management.

According to a study by Research In Action, an independent research company, the top three priorities for the partner programs are: price/value ratio, coverage of the entire partner spectrum, and solution flexibility. Unfortunately, , many enterprises still offer a very fragmented experience to their partner ecosystem. This limits the ability to increase partner growth and effectively expand and grow the partner network.

As organizations attempt to reinvigorate their partner strategy, the following core capabilities are required for a modern-day partner program:

1. Partner Acquisition
   Ability to prospect, recruit, and acquire potential partners
2. Partner Onboarding
   Definition and agreement of contractual terms as well as ease of access to relevant systems and infrastructure
3. Partner Learning
   Enablement and measurement of learning journeys and expertise required to sell or service customers
4. Partner Marketing
   Guiding and accelerating partner engagement through the lifecycle and transactional campaigns
5. Partner Market Development
   Creation and execution of joint campaigns and programs to drive customer acquisition, and  market development funds.
6. Partner Sales Management
   Lead distribution, deal registration, and order management.
7. Partner Performance Management
   Management of overall partner effectiveness, incentives, and operational support

As  businesses look to scale their partner ecosystem across the aforementioned capabilities, it is important to consider the following success drivers for these programs.

• Unified Partner Experience
  Providing intuitive and personalized experiences for partners throughout their journey with the organization. A successful solution integrates processes and information flow seamlessly from partner recruitment and onboarding through ongoing partner management. In a single place, a partner can request help with a complex deal or check available inventory.
• Extending Self-Service
  Extending self-service capabilities to partners allows for lowering channel management overhead, while accelerating partner sales cycles. Enabling partners to not only access product information and manage their pipeline, but also place orders, and run digital co-branded campaigns, offers opportunities for significant cycle acceleration and growth.
• Empowering Customer 360
  Modern customer interactions frequently occur across direct and indirect business channels. Maintaining and making unified customer information available across the transactions and interactions available improves both partner-led upsell and service, resulting in better brand relationships.
• Prediction and Personalization
  Dynamically tailoring information and recommendations to the partner users facilitates high-impact interactions and improves adoption and alignment with the partner program and processes. By leveraging rich data collected about the partner users, the organization can guide them through the sales cycle, and product selection or automatically identify growth opportunities.
• Enabling Transparency
  Dynamically tailoring information and recommendations to the partner users facilitates high-impact interactions and improves adoption and alignment with the partner program and processes. By leveraging rich data collected about the partner users, the organization can guide them through the sales cycle, and product selection or automatically identify growth opportunities.