Channel control can be accomplished by joining manufacturers, resellers, distributors and end customers together. Here is a cloud-based partner relationship management platform that can provide that supply chain connection.
Many software companies are finding that their channel partners influence a significant percentage of their business growth. The need to deploy this growth strategy is becoming increasingly important with the uptick in switching to the SaaS and cloud models enabling software firms to enter new markets (industries and geographies). However, even though the use of channel partners is increasing, some software companies are not fully reaping the benefits. Improving your company's capabilities in channel partner management depends on three steps to mitigate risks: 1) avoiding the pitfalls in channel partner relationships, 2) knowing how to turn transactional channel partners into strategic partners and 3) managing the relationships so they yield more value.
Many ISVs have not thought through their go-to-market strategy and modified their internal culture and expectations to compliment a SaaS, recurring-revenue model. It is one thing for Marketing and Sales to recognize the changing competitive conditions that challenge customer acquisition; but if the rest of the organizational processes and revenue model are structured around the legacy business, dependence on SaaS moving forward is fraught with risk and pitfalls. What follows are some of the key issues that traditional, on-premises vendors should examine to successfully migrate their business to the SaaS model.
The traditional software (on-premise) sales model relies on the both direct and indirect distribution, leveraging the indirect Channel (the Channel) to build a loyal customer base and to generate a large portion of sales. The notion of SaaS channels is evolving and is relatively untested in the marketplace. But there are cloud companies that have been building successful channel-centric organizations.
Matt Thompson is a General Manager of Developer & Platform Evangelism at Microsoft. Based in Silicon Valley, he and his team look after the "care and feeding" for the communities of developers, startups and IT Pros across the western US. I spoke with Matt about the evolution of Platform-as-a-Service and Microsoft's cloud strategy. Matt explained what is exactly meant by Microsoft's "Services plus Software" and Steve Ballmer's "We are all the in cloud" messages. He shared valuable information about current and future product-line strategies and roadmaps and how they align with Microsoft's overall cloud vision.