Enabling an ecosystem of partners

No product company can sell without partners. Customers need training, consulting, plug-in development, system integration with existing computing infrastructure, additional content like templates or sample (besides the one supplied with the product) and support in terms of expertise or resources to execute. Some companies provide these services along with the product. In my opinion, a product company should act as a focal point to enable these services and at the same time, stay away from trying to deliver everything on its own. Service delivery requires a different mindset and when a product company tries to deliver services, it often takes focus the away from the core product.

Creating an ecosystem of partners for a new product is an enormous challenge. To convince a set of trainers or consultants to support your product can take time and effort. For example, when we launched Adobe Technical Communication Suite with support for new workflows, it took me a year and 1 additional release to convince some of the partners to actively support the product. Partners need to invest time in learning the product and building a business around it. Hence, they often wait for the product to pick up momentum and let initial customer queries trickle in. Often ver1.0 of a new product falls short of customer expectations and the teething problems get resolved only when the ver2.0 arrives. From a corporate perspective, it is important to support the product in the interim. For that purpose, me and my team extended ourselves to user forums, extensive posting on blogs and direct resolution of queries from leading customers and potential partners. However, it is equally important to gracefully vacate the space and let partners take over.

Once an ecosystem of partners is established, it creates a virtuous circle and make the product self sustaining. If a product provides for extensible framework, partners can build plug-ins, templates or scripts which can add to the functionality of the product. This can open up new customer segments, while making customers more loyal to the product.

Several initiatives are required to create a vibrant ecosystem-

· Recognition of partners for their contribution – These can be done by providing unique titles like “Guru”, “Most Valued Professional”, “Master”, “ Black-Belt” and so on. This provides added motivation to the partners

· Training material and product information – Partners expect up-to-date and accurate information to be made available to them. At times, information cannot be disclosed because of confidentiality or corporate policy. In such a scenario, I have often used “statements indicating intent or product direction”.

· Invitation to conferences – Partners want to acquire more expertise in the product and they welcome any invitation to events which can help them do so.

· Honest relationships – Last, but certainly the most important, most partners care for an honest relationship with the company. I have seen partners leave a competitor and join us because we are upfront and honest in our communications.

While at Adobe, I had a good fortune to work with over 25 partners across the globe – from US, Germany, UK, Australia, Israel and so on. I take this opportunity to thank them for their wonderful help and support.