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This is the full research report from Amazon Consulting's 5th Annual State of Partnering Study. This comprehensive report in eBook format gives detailed analysis on the findings from this annual study. Thsi full report is only available to subscribers of the PartnerG2 market intelligence service.
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Amazon Consulting 2011
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Amazon Consulting 2011
0Amazon Consulting 2011 Influencing the Influencers: Research Executive Brief
- Research Report -
Amazon Consulting 2011
1Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
2011: Skills Diversification and Services Engagement
For five years, Amazon Consulting has been researching the partnering plans and
priorities of the IT vendor community. The last couple of years have been a bit
tumultuous, with a stronger current of overhaul than optimism. The turbulent economy,
increased globalization, introduction of disruptive technologies and evolving solution
provider business models have made it a challenging environment in which to partner
in a predictable and positive way.
This research contains reflections on the challenges, priorities, metrics and
investments of technology vendors as they go to market with and through various
indirect channels. It is the only study we do annually which is exclusively vendor
focused. As such, it affords great insights into where the vendor community is directing
its resources and energies for 2011.
Key TrendsFrom this broad body of research, we see several notable trends:
Partner types: Service providers are the new “it” channel and is a big focus this year for infrastructure and software vendors.
Globalization: Global program frameworks are the new standard. Partners applaud the simplicity and vendors are saving time and money.
Enablement: Technical certifications still equate to high value, but sales skills will continue as a big priority for competency.
Coverage: 2011 investments focus on business planning and field and phone-based partner management.
Services: Vendors continue to drive partners to build services and are increasing the sharing of services assets selling/delivery support
to mentoring investments.
Cloud: Cloud program and engagement models are coming of age. Contrary to rumors, vendors are going to market with partners
for these solutions.
Spending: High ROI expectations remain, but vendors are making strategic investments in diversifying partner skills.
Amazon Consulting 2011
2Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Global Value-Based Program Structures Now Standard
As we‟ve watched vendors‟ focus and investment throughout the last five
years, there have been a number of drivers moving vendors to a more
streamlined and consistent global partner program structure. These
include:
The ongoing consolidation of the solution provider community;
The increased global access of end-users for IT products and services,
driving partners‟ business model to be more globally aware and
responsive;
Vendors‟ need for more cost effective and scalable partner support
programs;
Solution providers‟ need for simplicity and reduction in administrative
overhead in working with their suppliers.
The strongest global program structures we see allow for a number of
important regional variations to meet the economic requirements and
business practice variations of different regions. These elements typically
include resale discounting, deal registration payouts, annual revenue
targets and MDF percentages. Very few (<20%) of vendors indicated
their regions still have their own distinct channel programs.
As evidence of this trend toward global programs, nearly half of vendors
today indicate their global program framework is now in place (Figure 1).
A significant number also indicate they are realizing scalability and cost
saving benefits as a result of this program approach.
Partners also seem happy with this global program approach. Over a third
of respondents declare their partners are happy with the clarity and
simplicity of their global program. Solution providers‟ demands for ease
of doing business, clear ROI and minimal overhead costs will continue to
motivate vendors to be as consistent and predictable as possible in this
area. For larger solution providers who engage across multiple business
models and geographies, this trend is a critical success factor in effective
vendor engagement.
Figure 1
Amazon Consulting 2011
3Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
New Business and Competitive Marketshare Lead Value Metrics
Figure 2
Performance expectations for global partnering efforts have clearly evolved
over the last five years. Not surprisingly, the core metric of new business
remain #1 this year; it has been either the #1 or #2 metric for the last four
years (Figure 2). Deal registration programs rewarding partners for new
projects and customers are the table-stakes of most vendor programs today.
And, these incentives are now extending regularly to new business gained in
key vertical markets and around certain vendor architectures and multi-
product solution sets.
We were a bit surprised to see technical expertise re-emerge as a key value
metric, given the shift in focus in recent years to sales skills. Despite the
goal of sales skills improvement for this year and last, core technical skills
remain the primary indicator of future value-based selling for many vendors.
Although vendors are looking at partner skills more holistically through their
enablement efforts, many of today‟s emerging technologies (mobility,
business intelligence, unified communications) require especially deep
technical skills to create successful customer engagements.
Competitive marketshare gains emerged this year as a new value metric.
This aligns with vendors‟ desire to get back on the offense for 2011 and
pump up top-line growth with and through their partners. However, partners
are usually less likely to take on a vendor‟s competitive battles, particularly
where they might also support that competitors‟ product line. In fact, we
see a number of single-brand or “franchise” building type channel programs
reemerging from vendors with broad product lines. Their aim – to build a
much broader, cross-portfolio approach to their partners‟ support of their
technologies.
These programs don‟t necessarily focus on brand exclusivity for a given
vendor, but offer rich rewards in the form of discounted training, field support
and extra marketing funds to partners who are effective in cross-selling their
portfolio. IBM, Cisco and HP are the more notable vendors with programs
like this, and we expect their competitive battles against each other for
partner mindshare and investment to heat up even further in 2011.
Amazon Consulting 2011
4Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Service Providers Come into the Spotlight
The IT market has been moving slowly but surely to a converged services model
over the last 5-7 years. Converged services is an IT delivery model where pre-and
post-sale professional services, products and support all come together in an
integrated offering that solves a specific business pain-point. And, both vendors
and solution providers have been jumping on the bandwagon to evolve their
services sales and delivery models in this direction. Customer adoption of cloud
services has just accelerated that trend.
Services-based solution provider business models are attractive to many vendors,
as they attempt to become more business relevant and deepen customer insights
through their partners. Business partners who meet end-users‟ overall IT needs by
offering comprehensive pre- and post-sale services and selling technology tend to
have the most lasting customer relationships. This was reflected in the strategic
value attributed to systems integrators, MSPs and service provider/carriers in this
year‟s study (Figure 3). Although resellers remain the most strategic partner type,
we have seen a dramatic increase in licensing models, engagement structures and
program support offered to regional and national managed service providers as
well as national and global service provider/carriers in the last 9-12 months.
Regional managed service providers are easier to address and support in broad-
based channel programs than are their larger telecom counterparts. Many of the
larger telecom/service providers (Terremark, AT&T, Verizon, BT, Savvis) have
historically been handled by vendors as large enterprise customers, and as such
have been covered by the vendors‟ direct enterprise sales teams. About a third of
vendors indicate they already engage with service providers and will continue their
recruitment and enablement efforts. Another 20% are planning to put a large focus
on this class of partner to actively recruit and engage them in 2011 (Figure 4).
As telecom/service providers diversify their offerings into applications and cloud
services and attempt to penetrate the SMB market, their expectations of their
suppliers for go-to-market support are increasing. Many have developed their own
down-stream channel programs to attract smaller MSPs and VARs to sell and
promote their broad infrastructure services. They often look to their leading
vendors partners (EMC, NetApp, Cisco, HP) to achieve that sales and marketing
success through the vendor‟s broader VAR and solution provider network.
Figure 3
Figure 4
Service Providers
are existing partner
type, will continue
to recruit and enable
Big focus, will actively
engage and recruit
Service Providers
Amazon Consulting 2011
5Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
When we explored the state of partnering efforts for cloud services, the results
reflect the continued dependence vendors have on channel partners to assist in the
sale and/or delivery of these offerings (Figure 5). What‟s also interesting is that
there is not one clear leading channel engagement model for vendors as they look
ahead to cloud services. The majority will deliver cloud services directly to end-
users and use partners as sales agents or resellers, but another sizeable group will
only sell technology to their solution providers and expect them to deliver their own
cloud services to the market.
Contrary to industry rumors, most vendors will be dependent on their channel
partners for one or more functions in getting cloud services to market in 2011. Over
a quarter will deliver direct cloud services and use their channel partners in a
traditional reselling model. We see examples of these reselling channel programs
from both hardware (Cisco and HP), software (Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com)
and service providers (Rackspace). Some in fact are offering automation tools to
ease partners‟ burden in billing and contract management of their cloud services. A
nearly equal amount of companies also plan to deliver cloud services directly to
end-users and use partners as only sales agents. Their expectations are for the
partner to leverage their existing customer base (often SMB focused), evangelize
their cloud solutions and refer the customer for consumption to the vendor directly.
We predict that this engagement model will be the least popular model, over time,
as partners themselves invest in a services offerings and attempt to retain customer
control from the vendor.
The top cloud response from vendors clearly indicates their intent to sell technology
to partners to enable cloud offerings but not to sell cloud service directly to
customers. This is the most common approach for most server, storage and
networking manufacturers to date, as they are accustomed to using their
infrastructure-focused partner community to create their own solutions and services
around their technology. The big focus for this class of manufacturers is to engage
around professional services mentoring, and teach their hardware-focused partners
how to successfully conduct pre-sales assessments to identify the private, hybrid or
public cloud opportunities and migration path most suitable for their customers. We
see these services mentoring programs from most every vendor we work with.
Cloud Engagement Models Reveal Partner Dependence
Figure 5
Only 17% of respondents indicate they are still
formulating their cloud partnering strategy. We think
this is a bit understated, as many vendors are still
conducting pilots around cloud services and technology
engagement and determining how many of these
models they will offer. Only recently have some of the
larger infrastructure vendors announced their initial
cloud engagement models – most notably IBM, HP and
Cisco.
Amazon Consulting 2011
6Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Business Planning and High Touch Support a Priority
In last year‟s study, business planning activities emerged as a big focus. And,
this year the focus continues and increases, extending down beyond the top tier
of vendors‟ partners (Figure 6). And another 30% of vendors said they were
going to start business planning to better identify their strategic partners.
Assuming that activity is real business planning and not just basic profiling and it
drives mutual accountability and investments, this activity will be very positive
for both partners and vendors.
We think response also indicates the level of high-touch support and business
model insight vendors both want and need in 2011. The only challenge for
solution providers here is the possibility of being inundated by different vendors,
all wanting to do business planning, much of which might be redundant.
Partner Management CoverageFollowing on the theme of high touch support, in our questions about 2011
investments, we asked about changes planned in vendors‟ partner coverage
models. We were surprised (and delighted) to hear of a resurgence in people-
based resources to help support partners. Over a quarter of respondents plan
to add field partner-facing sales reps, and another 17% plan to add phone
based partner sales reps (Figure 7). Over the last two years we saw many
vendors reduce their partner-facing sales headcount and/or move people from
field based positions to phone-based roles. In some cases, this had a negative
impact on both vendor/partner relationships or stalled the onboarding and
development of new partners.
Staffing support is expected to go well beyond basic sales and technical
training. Nearly a quarter of vendors indicate they plan to add business
development reps to assist with business planning and overall enablement.
Another 21% expect to add technical staff (SE‟s) to provide deal support and
help partners architect their solutions. This staffing model assumes that the
structure of the basic channel program from these vendors is relatively simple
and easily accessed, so that the local resources can focus on longer-term
planning, solution development and marketing campaigns. Theoretically, the
addition of phone reps or a help desk function should be able to offload basic
program questions., at least in the bigger or more complex programs.
Business Planning
Figure 6
Figure 7
Amazon Consulting 2011
7Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Enablement Focused on Sales Skills
Vendors who view their channel partners holistically tend to have greater
success through indirect channels than those who look at only isolated skills
sets. Most vendors indicate their ultimate goal in applying any enablement
resources is to create a self-sufficient and relatively autonomous partner
community (Figure 8). Beyond the basics of business acumen, vendors has
significantly broadened their enablement efforts to include solution selling and
prospecting skills, service delivery skills and marketing skills. And, those
enablement efforts tend to be directed at those partners who have demonstrated
the most commitment to building technical skills and certifications and those with
the highest probability of driving incremental market reach and revenue for the
vendor.
Of all the challenges of 2010, this year‟s respondents ranked increasing partner
sales competency as their #2 challenge with a nearly 50% response. In last
year‟s study it was the #1 area for skills improvement, and in both this and last
year‟s study, increasing partner sales competency was respondents‟ #1 overall
priority. Partners‟ ability to do effective pre-sales assessments and sell value to
line of business decisions makers have remained among the most desired
sales skills by vendors for 2011 (Figure 9).
Figure 8
Figure 9
We attribute this focus on sales skills improvement to several
issues:
The sluggish economy shining a light on partners with limited
qualifying and prospecting skills;
An exaggerated focus on technical skills and specializations over
the last 5 years, to support emerging technologies;
End-users‟ demands of solution providers to understand their
business processes and do adequate needs assessment and pre-
sales work before proposing a solution;
Industry consolidation among solution providers forcing better
differentiated services and selling approaches.
In any scenario, we expect to see vendors continue to produce
better
and better sales tools, solution selling guide and playbooks that
attempt to align the vendors‟ sales methodologies and messaging to
that of their channel partners.
Amazon Consulting 2011
8Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
State of P2P Collaboration and Social Media
of vendors plan to increase
P2P collaboration
In the current economic environment, solution providers are (and need
to be) very selective about their investments in staffing and skills. And
as vendors push solution providers to invest in deep technical skills and
market specializations, it would seem logical that most (other than the
very largest) would need to team up with peers to provide their customer
a broad set of skills without requiring significant investment.
This has been a growing market dynamic for some time among the IT
solution provider community. However, the vendor‟s desire and
resources applied to fostering partner-to-partner collaboration (P2P) on
a broad scale has waxed and waned. As an overall priority in this year‟s
study, it ranked #15 of 16 choices with only an 11% response. In last
year‟s study fostering P2P collaboration was noted as a priority by only
15% of vendors.
Ironically enough, recruiting or maintaining relationships with the right
solution providers to provide market coverage / capabilities has been
near the top of the priorities list for the last three years. Couldn‟t vendors
more efficiently accomplish this if they could stop trying to find every
skill set they need in one partner and better foster P2P collaboration?
There are many professional associations, buying groups, consortiums
and distributor-sponsored communities (VentureTech Network,
VARNex, TechSelect) that work toward this goal. And, we acknowledge
this isn‟t easy. Relationships need to be formed, trust built, common
goals identified, financial worked out and on and on.
One of the business value promises of social media has been the ease
with which it puts us in contact and collaboration with each other.
However, we see the vendor community so far really only successful in
using social media for outbound marketing of its company and channel
programs. A valid objective, of course, but different than fostering
collaboration.
When we asked vendors how they plan to use social media with their
channel partners in 2011, the top priority of better communicating the
value of their company and channel program was #1 on the list, up
nearly 20 percentage points from last year‟s study. So, social media is
now legitimately an outbound channel marketing medium.
There was an equal response to last year around using social media to
encourage more vendor to partner two-way communication (52%
response). Admittedly, there have been some very successful private
and public social media communities built within vendors‟ channel
communities (Cisco, IBM and Salesforce.com come to mind). Using
social media to foster P2P collaboration actually jumped from 2010 to
2011, with a 31% response. However, these on-line efforts by the more
innovative vendors are still too early to judge and metrics for success
are still being formed.
Figure 10
Amazon Consulting 2011
9Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Services Readiness is New Enablement Priority
Some of the top priorities around skills development for 2011 equally relate to
sales skills as they do to services skills. The ability to do effective pre-sales
assessments and enhance post-sale professional services methodology were
both in our vendor respondents‟ top priority list for 2010 and 2011, indicating the
growing importance of service skills to the vendor community.
In our ongoing consulting work, we‟ve seen a steady and notable increase in
focus on services engagement models and services-tailored channel programs.
What‟s interesting is we see an overall desire from partners to become
increasingly autonomous for services delivery from their leading suppliers, while
vendors are increasingly focused on closer engagement in the form of sharing
tools, mentoring and doing co-delivery.
Another data point supporting the solution providers‟ desire for autonomy is the
decline of partners as purely sales agents, decreasing from nearly 70% of
vendor responses in 2009 to 25% for 2011 (Figure 11). As vendors continue to
invest in sharing services assets and pushing partners for value-based selling
while still working on the clarity and conflict of their services engagement
models, it‟s inevitable that solution providers will want to delivery services free
of vendor involvement.
Figure 11
Vendor engagement models need to be clear, consistent and
conflict free before solution providers will trust or invest in a
vendor. Lack of clarity or channel conflict around services
delivery seems to have decreased from last year to this year
(Figure 12). We do see a lot of vendors investing in this
area, for both scalability and cost-saving measures but also
as a way to empower partners and urge them to invest in
services.
In keeping with that empowerment, sharing of services IP is
definitely on the rise. We‟ve seen a wide variety of vendors
actively packaging and sharing their services tools, scopes of
work, reference architectures and other intellectual property
in the last year. New programs to certify service providers
on delivery (and sales) skills for services are also popping up
left and right. This open sharing of IP begs the issue of
service delivery success metrics, for vendors to be able to
rationalize this enablement investment. We see metrics
more commonly now around customer satisfaction and
services quality, executed through surveys and audits.
57%unclear
2010
23%unclear/conflict
2011
Services Conflict/
Rules of Engagement Clarity
Figure 12
Amazon Consulting 2011
10Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Partner Profitability Plans & Services Growth Barriers
Figure 13
Figure 14
Services Investment BarriersDespite the intense desire many vendors have to get their channel partners to
invest in a more services-centric business model, this economic environment
has not been an easy time to make that demand.
When we polled our vendor respondents this year about the barriers they‟ve
seen to their partners further investing in a services-based business model,
the answers were quite varied (Figure 14). The top response was an issue
we„ve heard a lot about in the last two years, namely insufficient access to
capital. That‟s been a market reality, especially for smaller solution providers.
A number of vendors jumped into the fray last year in 2009 and 2010 offering
creative financing programs to both their end-users and solution providers,
either directly or through distribution, with notable success.
A surprising response to us was the 26% of vendors having heard from their
channel partners that there‟s insufficient customer demand to warrant a
services investment. That response doesn‟t seem to align to industry
projections of professional services growth. But, it likely has a lot to do with
the solution providers‟ ability to adequately assess customer needs and
position services correctly as part of a long-term solution.
Partner ProfitabilityBeing well capitalized goes hand in hand with having sufficient
selling and retained margins. Partners who can/did not invest in their
services capabilities or emerging technologies are more likely to be
those suffering from lack of sufficient profitability in the last two
years.
In this year‟s study, the top actions the vendor community is taking to
counteract profitability issues for their partners include engaging in
business planning and doing more lead generation for/with partners.
Business planning was #1 on this topic in last year‟s study too, and
we‟ve seen elsewhere in this research how broadly vendors are
planning to invest here in 2011. Partners will always welcome vendor
assisted or created leads. As marketing automation and lead
tracking systems improve we expect vendors to continue to invest in
this area with their channel partners.
Overall, we think strong cross-functional enablement programs and
decreasing process or program complexity are probably the two
most sustaining activities vendors can engage in to help partners
increase profitability.
Amazon Consulting 2011
11Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Investment Appetite is Strong, with High ROI Expectations
The last two years have been challenging for any economic investment that wasn‟t
well understood and rationalized. And our respondents indicate that 2010 was
indeed a year where they highly scrutinized most every partner-related
investments (Figure 15). A higher level of ROI expectations seemed to emerge
after 2009‟s economic low point, and the “new normal” is for both variable and
fixed partnering expenses to undergo a high level of scrutiny.
What‟s encouraging (and a bit surprising) is that vendors made few reductions in
fixed or variable expenses in 2010. Much of that happened in 2009. Some
vendors (30%) even pressed the accelerator in 2010 and spent ahead of 2009
levels in an effort to help counteract the anticipated lack of investment by their
partners. We saw these investment come most in the form of new deal
incentives, solution-selling incentives and selective demand generation marketing
efforts.
When asked what investments provided the highest ROI in 2010, we see the
same top three elements from last year‟s study (Figure 16):
partner facing staff
reselling discounts
deal registration incentives
The high ROI on partner-facing staff supports the previously mentioned plans to
significantly expand high touch people support in 2011. Pay-for-performance
programs such as deal registration and reselling discounts are usually what
continues when spending gets tight. Given the continued strategic importance of
traditional resellers, we expect reselling discounts and deal registration incentives
to remain as core offerings in most channel programs, uninterrupted by funding re-
balancing.
We expect market development funds will start flowing again this year. This area
went through its unfair share of scrutiny and cuts over the last three years.
However, we see a lot of new tools being launched to assist with campaign
building and delivery, especially as it relates to web events and social media-
based marketing.
Figure 15
Figure 16
Amazon Consulting 2011
12Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Ease of Doing Business Imperative
77%2008
59%2009
37%2010
38%2011
The quest to be easier to do business with is a noble one, but one that fades in
and out of vendor‟s priorities depending on what they‟re trying to achieve with
partners at the time. It tends to be a higher priority for partners who are on the
receiving end of overly complex channel programs.
Yet, it‟s again in the top three overall priorities for our vendor respondents this
year, with a 38% response. And, it‟s been in the top three overall priorities for
our vendor respondents since 2008 (Figure 17). When top-line results are
strong and channels are growing, vendors tend to focus on this issue as a way
to get a competitive advantage and create even more satisfied partners. When
the vendor and/or its channel is struggling, focus gets applies here as a means
for cost savings and efficiency. Other reasons why we think ease of doing
business is back on the vendors‟ short-list include:
Information transparency: with the growth in social media, instant access
and web2.0, businesspeople are used to getting answers quickly, and from a
variety of devices. Ordering a software license shouldn‟t take 4 days when
placing an order on Amazon.com takes 30 seconds.
Global programs: Moving to a global framework tends to shine a light on
overly complex program elements that don‟t scale or need to be automated.
Evidence of this is in the rise of outsourced help-desk functions to support
basic program questions, relieving the field teams of these details.
Complexity = cost: Partners have less tolerance for overhead costs
associated with vendor programs and business processes. They want to invest
their resources not on administration but in driving revenue.
Business planning: Vendors are getting closer to their partners through
business planning; discussion around simplicity and time wasted on vendor
program requirements often come out in this planning
On-line sales training: Vendors continue to invest in on-line sales training
as a way to solve for a lack of sales and prospecting skills; on-line sales
training is often grouped into ease-of-doing-business initiatives
Figure 17
Ease of Doing Business – Priority Trending
Figure 18
We see ease of doing business as one critical component in an
overall Partner Value Equation (Figure 18). The math is a simple
equation: opportunity divided by investment should yield a 2-3x
ROI for the partner. And every element in the denominator
investment list has the potential to be overly complex. In fact, in
other Amazon Consulting research, the top two most complex
elements partners noted which impact their ability to service
customers are pricing and quoting systems and technical
certification programs. This complexity is a tangible element of
the solution providers‟ decision-making relative to continued
investment in a vendor‟s product line.
Amazon Consulting 2011
13Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Essential Vendor Guidance
We recommend several actions based on this year‟s study:
1. Declare your cloud strategy NOW: If you haven‟t already
done so, define your go-to-market plans for cloud services
and declare your partner engagement strategy immediately.
And clearly address where services providers fit. Your
model(s) is likely to change several times in the next several
years, but lack of a statement early in 2011 will be
conspicuous by its absence.
2. Do real planning, not profiling: Business planning is a
worthy investment of time and resources but only if it drives
new actions and results for both the vendor and partner.
Create a collaborative process that makes this planning as
valuable to the partner throughout 2011 as it is to you.
3. Look at the whole partner: Technical skills are
fundamental for emerging technologies. But, sales and
service delivery skills are becoming increasingly critical for
demanding customers. Create a way to measure a more
balanced set of skills, and make services enablement a BIG
priority within that scorecard.
4. Find and eradicate complexity: Complexity = cost =
partner margin and loyalty drag. More high touch sales,
business development or technical people will only help if
they can get past the day-to-day complexity issues of your
program and processes. Accelerate your focus
5. Invest to grow: With signs of recovery on the horizon, well
placed aggressive spending in enablement, field coverage or
co-marketing should yield results stronger than in past years
and help your partner program rise above the noise.
Declare your cloud strategy NOW:
Develop a clear vision and detailed engagement models to motivate partner investment
Do real planning, not profiling: Create a collaborative business planning
process with mutual accountability
Look at the whole partner:Create a scorecard to measure and advance overall
skills: Make services enablement a BIG priority
Find and eradicate complexity:Vigorously audit program complexity; revise coverage model to optimize partner support
Invest to grow:
Plan an offensive investment strategy that maximizes spend in enablement & selling support
Amazon Consulting 2011
14Amazon Consulting 2011 5th Annual State of Partnering Study: Research Report
Research Background
Established in 1997, Amazon Consulting, LLC, (Mountain View, CA) increases the impact of partnering by designing, implementing
and automating effective partner models. Amazon Consulting‟s clients entrust them to formulate growth strategies, build route-to-
market models, perform competitive benchmarks, design partner programs, facilitate partner advisory councils, and provide
temporary experts for project management and program execution. For clients looking to optimize the partner relationships and
improve organizational efficiencies, Amazon Consulting offers PartnerPath, a modular partner management automation system. For
more details visit us at www.amazonconsulting.com.
This full report is only available to subscribers of Amazon Consulting‟s comprehensive PartnerG2 market intelligence subscription.
Annual Revenues Product MixGeography Focus
We had 100 unique vendors respond to this year‟s study. Their profiles in aggregate are detailed below: