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Vendors acknowledge partners face field engagement issues
16 June, 2010
By Beth Vanni, Director, Market Intelligence, Amazon Consulting |
In a recent research study conducted by Amazon Consulting and Integrated mar.com focused on engaging services partners, services-centric solution providers and their leading vendors are experiencing many of the same challenges around services delivery. Field engagement was by far the biggest challenge experienced by both groups.
About 40% of solution provider respondents indicated that two of their top three biggest challenges were related to establishing solid working relationships and managing their engagement with vendors' field staff. And, those top three challenges didn't vary much by size of solution provider. Even more interesting was that nearly half (48%) of vendors themselves indicated that a challenge for them was getting their services partners trusted and engaged with their field teams.
As vendors attempt to train and enable their channel partners for services delivery, co-selling and co-delivery have become very common. This model is usually used during the enablement and certification phase of building a services channel, and 57% of our respondents indicate it is their most critical channel engagement model for services (see Figure 1 below). However, partners don't see it as being used most frequently in the field. This may be because of the size of our solution provider respondents are relatively small companies (80% <$10m), where vendors reserve co-delivery activities for larger or more sophisticated solution providers. Or, these solution providers may shy away from teaming with their vendors' direct sales or delivery teams based on the fear of channel conflict.
Figure 1
When we asked the vendors about perceptions among their own channel partners to their services engagement model, the answers were quite alarming (see Figure 2 below). More than half of vendors thought almost all or lots of their partners would consider them a trusted business partner and a company that treats them fairly and consistently, yet 47% also said only some or very few of their partners would rate their rules of engagement as "fair". Further, 57% of vendors said that very few of their partners even understood their rules of engagement around services. This could be true for a number of common reasons: the vendor doesn't have clearly defined rules of engagement, or they haven't enforced them rigorously in the field and/or they aren't doing a good job in formally communicating them to their partners. We see a combination of all three of these issues fairly regularly.
Figure 2
Whatever the reasons for any one vendor, we think that when 50% of vendors themselves indicate that some/very few of their partners have had a good experiencing engaging with them historically in the field, there are larger problems. And, balancing the requirements and rewards of an overall channel program with the needs and behaviours of field teams is no small feat for any vendor's channel program or channel sales manager. However, given the future of technology delivered as a managed service versus an on-premise set of gear, getting services partner engagement right should be a critical priority for any channel-committed company.
For more details contact us at info@amazonconsulting.com
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