2016 global partner management customer value … · customer relationship management ......

2016 Global Partner Management Customer Value Leadership Award

2016

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

© Frost & Sullivan 2016 2 “We Accelerate Growth”

Contents

Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3

Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 3

Customer Impact and Business Impact of Impartner ................................................ 4

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 6

Significance of Customer Value Leadership .................................................................... 7

Understanding Customer Value Leadership .................................................................... 7

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................... 8

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards ....................... 8

Research Methodology .......................................................................................... 8

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices ................................................................................................................... 9

About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 10



Background and Company Performance

Industry Challenges

Merits of Partner Management Solutions versus Do-It-Yourself Solutions

Software solutions are a critical part of the digital transformation process. Productivity

software that is intuitive and efficient enables users to accomplish more. Customer

relationship management (CRM) software is a long-established software category that

allows sales teams to collaborate more efficiently, discover sales opportunities, and close

sales opportunities with existing clients and promising leads. Frost & Sullivan recently

observed partner relationship management (PRM) software developing strong momentum

in the sector. While similar to CRM, PRM improves the collaboration and efficiency between

vendors and their business partners to discover and capture incremental revenue

opportunities. PRM focuses on managing vendor-channel partnerships to generate indirect

sales revenues and foster more meaningful, profitable, and efficient partnerships among

businesses.

Providers of PRM solutions educate businesses on how vital partnership strategy is; in

some cases, a partnership strategy should be seen as equally important as a customer

relationship. In fact, partnerships are becoming more critical to business growth and

profitability as technology companies focus increasingly on channel sales. Products are

becoming more complex, with modular components and also services that are often

supplied by multiple vendors. Partners are best suited to determine customers’ needs and

to sell, customize, and implement solutions that meet them. Do-it-yourself (DIY) or

“build-your-own-portal” (BYOP)-type solutions may appear sufficient until businesses

realize that nearly 86% of partners base their partnership decisions on the portal

presentation. In other words, businesses with DIY solutions as their partnership strategy

should consider the risk of lost sales and partners due to poor portals. Alternatively,

professionally developed and managed portals with powerful PRM software stand to

capture an incremental $8 to $9 million in indirect partner revenues on average, resulting

in a far higher return on investment (ROI).

Key Challenges that Impact the Partner Management Industry

Sometimes businesses run into problems when they place too much faith in their software

solutions. For instance, some companies may withhold sales team members’ commissions

until they update CRM records, in an attempt to enforce transparency and integrity across

the organization. However, if the software is not intuitive enough, this becomes counter-

productive. Salespeople waste time that they could be selling, and top performing

salespeople may leave, ultimately losing the company potential sales opportunities and

revenue.



Partner management is no different, and certain common challenges must be addressed to

recognize the ROI potential of a premium PRM solution. Therefore, despite the merits of

Partner Management, certain key challenges impact organizations’ partner strategies:

• BYOP or DIY portals: Companies tend to build portals with limited functionality and,

once developed, neglect them. Portals seen as a strategic investment instead of an

obligatory expense tend to yield a higher ROI.

• Faith before function: Forcing employees to use poorly designed software tools is

counter-productive. Without a prioritization on intuitive, easy to use design, users

will subvert the software altogether, rendering it useless, or continue to rely on IT

just to perform routine tasks. In the sales field, this talent pool is very small,

making it difficult for companies to expand operations and recognize their growth,

so choosing solutions that can be used and updated independent of IT is critical.

Customer Impact and Business Impact of Impartner

Founded in 1997, Impartner transforms the way businesses see partner management.

Instead of viewing partner management as an obligatory expense, Impartner helps

businesses realize the indirect revenue opportunities of professional and functional partner

management strategies. Impartner's partner management solutions motivate vendors and

their channel partners to use relationship management software. Employees see

professional portal development solutions as an intuitive solution to discover indirect

revenues, instead of DIY portals, which yield minimal results.

A Relationship Management Solution that Maximizes Return on Investment

Impartner’s main educational focus in building the PRM market is getting companies to

recognize the proven ROI of premium partnership management solutions. PRM maximizes

the potential revenue generation from indirect partner channels and builds a more

effective synergy between companies. Businesses using PRM software can improve their

management of customer channels with intuitive software solutions, therefore creating

much more profitable partner relationships.

Impartner’s turnkey Channel Management solutions allow partners to build a symbiotic

relationship and more partner loyalty than is possible with DIY solutions. Impartner’s

solutions enable both partners and suppliers to grow their end-customer bases, build

loyalty, and increase sales and revenues.

A Consistent and Personalized Partner Experience

Inside the US, Impartner uses a direct sales business model as well as key strategic

partnerships to target companies who have not yet recognized their potential with a

partnership strategy. After consulting with potential customers, Impartner offers to build a

more professional partner portal, allowing businesses to capture the missing 80% value

that their DIY portals lack. Impartner offers several options for portal deployment, ranging



from a turn-key solution that comes out-of-the-box with all the features most customers

required, yet can be deployed in as few as 30 days, to fully customized and branded

portals that may take a couple of months to deploy. Impartner then further educates the

customer on how to fully leverage its premium, profitable, and intuitive partner

management platform. The superior customer experience yields a higher ROI and makes

users want to continue using the newer PRM software. Businesses may also request a

tailored solution for special applications and integration requirements. Outside the US,

while Impartner does sell direct, the primary go-to-market strategy is through indirect

channels.

Impartner is a cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Partner Relationship

Management solution for customers’ Partner Portal management needs. Impartner’s

unique Hybrid-Tenancy architecture incorporates the best of both multi-tenant and single-

tenant functions. Impartner hosts all portal functions in a fully multi-tenant enabled, cloud

hosted back end application, but expose a customer through a partner facing single tenant

portal that the company builds for each customer. The single-tenant front end portal

enables a highly personalized partner experience with pixel-perfect branding. The multi-

tenant back end provides industry leading security and functionality. New features and

security updates must be applied only a single time, and all customers immediately

benefit, allowing for feature consistency and an easier customer ownership experience.

The Bottom Line: Keeping Up With Evolving Partner Expectations

As businesses must constantly adapt to remain competitive, creating a strong relationship

with key stakeholders and partners is critical. Impartner provides a solution that allows

businesses to capture lost revenue opportunities. While PRM is relatively new and some

prospective customers remain uneducated, the company’s best-in-class partner

management solutions have already proven to provide strong ROI. Through successful

implementation of industry best practices and by developing an innovative SaaS solution,

Frost & Sullivan predicts that Impartner will continue to achieve commercial success

across various market verticals.

National Instruments1

National Instruments previously used a DIY solution for its partner management needs. By

switching to Impartner, the company increased its net promoter score from 40% to 73%,

increasing its revenue by 120%. Additionally, the company worked with Impartner to

develop the Impartner Locator tool, allowing users to utilize its matchmaking feature to

identify strong potential partners.

1 Impartner Awards Showcase the Best of Partner Relationship Management at Inaugural Impartnercon (Feb 2016): http://www.impartner.com/news/press-releases/impartner-awards-showcase-the-best-of-partner-relationship-management-at-inaugura-119



Rackspace

In another example of a DIY solution that was not delivering on the needed value,

Rackspace decided to work with Impartner after its existing solution proved inefficient

after 18 months of implementation. With Impartner, Rackspace saw a positive ROI in only

eight weeks’ time—providing more functionality at less cost. Today, Rackspace uses

Impartner to help manage over 3,000 partners worldwide.

SunGard Availability Services

SunGard AS originally used a DIY solution, but discovered it lacked the ability to automate

deal registration, impeded greater partner communication, and lacked streamlined access

to training material. Within the first year of implementation, SunGard AS increased its

partner leads by 20% and channel revenue growth rate by 30% with Impartner’s PRM

software solution.

Conclusion

Convincing prospective customers to embrace new business concepts is difficult,

regardless of how promising the revenue or return on investment potential is. Impartner’s

partner management solutions have already proven its value through case studies where

customers have achieved a double-digit return on investment, in an area that has

relatively low audience awareness and high growth potential. Partners demand a higher

quality partner strategy; Impartner is the ideal solution to this new market standard. The

bottom line is that Impartner’s implementation of industry best practices and proven ROI

has built its brand equity in a relatively new market with high growth potential.

With its innovation and proven value, Impartner earns Frost & Sullivan’s 2016 Global

Customer Value Leadership Award for the partner management market.



Significance of Customer Value Leadership Ultimately, growth in any organization depends upon customers purchasing from your

company, and then making the decision to return time and again. Delighting customers is

therefore the cornerstone of any successful growth strategy. To achieve these dual goals

(growth and customer delight), an organization must be best-in-class in three key areas:

understanding demand, nurturing the brand, differentiating from the competition. This

three-fold approach to delivering customer value is explored further below.

Understanding Customer Value Leadership Customer Value Leadership is defined and measured by two macro-level categories:

customer impact and business impact. These two sides work together to make customers

feel valued, and confident in their products’ quality and long shelf life. This dual

satisfaction translates into repeat purchases and a high lifetime customer value.



Key Benchmarking Criteria

For the Customer Value Leadership Award, we evaluated two key factors—Customer

Impact and Business Impact—according to the criteria identified below.

Customer Impact

Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value

Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience

Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience

Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience

Criterion 5: Brand Equity

Business Impact

Criterion 1: Financial Performance

Criterion 2: Customer Acquisition

Criterion 3: Operational Efficiency

Criterion 4: Growth Potential

Criterion 5: Human Capital

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards

Research Methodology

Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research

methodology represents the analytical

rigor of our research process. It offers a

360-degree-view of industry challenges,

trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of

Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies.

Too often, companies make important

growth decisions based on a narrow

understanding of their environment,

leading to errors of both omission and

commission. Successful growth strategies

are founded on a thorough understanding

of market, technical, economic, financial,

customer, best practices, and demographic

analyses. The integration of these research

disciplines into the 360-degree research

methodology provides an evaluation

platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-

in-class levels.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN THE CHAOS

Technology

Obsolescence

Disruptive

Technologies

New

Applications

CEO

Demographics

Needs

and

PerceptionsSegmentation

Buying

Behavior

Branding

and

Positioning

Competitive

Benchmarking

Emerging

Competition

Competitive

Strategy

Capital

Investments

Availability

of

Capital

Country

Risk

Economic

Trends

Crowd

Sourcing

Growth

Strategies

Career

Development

Growth

Implementation

Industry

Evolution

New Vertical

Markets

Industry

Expansion

Industry

Convergence

Emerging

Technologies

Smart Cities

Sustainability

New Business

Cultures

GeoPolitical

Stability



Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices Our awards team follows a 10-step process (illustrated below) to evaluate award

candidates and assess their fit with our best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity

of our awards process are based on close adherence to this process.

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT

1 Monitor, target, and screen

Identify award recipient candidates from around the globe

• Conduct in-depth industry research

• Identify emerging sectors • Scan multiple geographies

Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria

2 Perform 360-degree research

Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline

• Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners

• Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria

• Rank all candidates

Matrix positioning all candidates’ performance relative to one another

3

Invite thought leadership in best practices

Perform in-depth examination of all candidates

• Confirm best-practice criteria • Examine eligibility of all

candidates • Identify any information gaps

Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates

4

Initiate research director review

Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles

• Brainstorm ranking options • Invite multiple perspectives

on candidates’ performance • Update candidate profiles

Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper

5

Assemble panel of industry experts

Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders

• Share findings • Strengthen cases for

candidate eligibility • Prioritize candidates

Refined list of prioritized award candidates

6

Conduct global industry review

Build consensus on award candidates’ eligibility

• Hold global team meeting to review all candidates

• Pressure-test fit with criteria • Confirm inclusion of all

eligible candidates

Final list of eligible award candidates, representing success stories worldwide

7 Perform quality check

Develop official award consideration materials

• Perform final performance benchmarking activities

• Write nominations • Perform quality review

High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes

8

Reconnect with panel of industry experts

Finalize the selection of the best-practice award recipient

• Review analysis with panel • Build consensus • Select winner

Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria

9 Communicate recognition

Inform award recipient of award recognition

• Present award to the CEO • Inspire the organization for

continued success • Celebrate the recipient’s

performance

Announcement of award and plan for how recipient can use the award to enhance the brand

10 Take strategic action

Share award news with stakeholders and customers

• Coordinate media outreach • Design a marketing plan • Assess award’s role in future

strategic planning

Widespread awareness of recipient’s award status among investors, media personnel, and employees



About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth

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2016 global partner management customer value … · customer relationship management ......

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