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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
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 3 “We Accelerate Growth”
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.
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 4 “We Accelerate Growth”
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
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 5 “We Accelerate Growth”
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
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 6 “We Accelerate Growth”
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.
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 7 “We Accelerate Growth”
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.
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 8 “We Accelerate Growth”
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 RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 9 “We Accelerate Growth”
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
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2016 10 “We Accelerate Growth”
About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth
and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's
Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined
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http://www.frost.com.