WorkSpan's June Ecosystem Business Summit was an incredible opportunity to learn from the best in our industry -- Tom Stuermer, Jason McKinney, and Julia Chen. With more than 200 ecosystem professionals tuning in live, we had an engaging event discussing the latest topics and trends in the partner ecosystem.
We’ve curated the event’s panel highlights and poll responses. Read on to dive deeper into the topics that matter most to you!
Ecosystem Business Management and the New Era of Partner Co-Selling
Mayank Bawa, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, WorkSpan
- Ecosystem Engagement Framework
- Forrester, Gartner, and IDC have pointed to a framework that can get businesses engaged with the ecosystem: the Strategy, the Business Model, and the Operating Model. - The Ecosystem Flywheel
- Think of your ecosystem operating model as your flywheel to revenue by co-selling, co-investing, co-innovating and co-marketing with your partners. - Digitizing the Ecosystem
- WorkSpan helps get your ecosystem business process flywheel going by digitizing your ecosystem operating model. - Co-Sell Referrals and Opportunities
- In a co-sell model, you and your partner are engaged collaboratively all through the life cycle of the deal. This requires you to manage the co-sell deals as a process. - Co-selling with Microsoft
- WorkSpan offers a way to connect your CRM data directly and securely to Microsoft Partner Center to co-sell with Microsoft. See our listing on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace to get started today for only $2,000/month.
“Our goal is to be the world's trusted ecosystem network - a digital platform on which businesses can connect with their trusted partners to create value and abundance in the service of the end customer.”
- Mayank Bawa
How Accenture and Google are Driving the Digital Transformation Ecosystem
Tom Stuermer, Global Managing Director - Google Business Group at Accenture
- Copernican Moment in Partner Ecosystems
- Your partner ecosystem doesn't revolve around your company - partners are a constellation around customers. Partner teams need to weaponize their ecosystems - lock arms and pull out the big guns out with partners to serve your customer better. - Evolution of Alliance Management
- To truly be effective, alliance roles need to transform from being reactive connectors in the past to now being proactive innovators and drivers of the business. - Accenture-Google Engagement
- Today when Accenture and Google partner on opportunities, there are typically multiple partners involved in order to bring the right solution to customers. - Vision for Future Partnerships
- Accenture’s vision for partnering is to solve customers’ needs by bringing together the right partners for a unique and differentiated overall solution.
“Don't underestimate the elimination of spreadsheets, the ability to interact and collaborate on a specific deal …. its impact alone is pretty valuable...[With WorkSpan] we've got control of what we need and that's been impactful for us!”
- Tom’s advice to potential WorkSpan users
Building and Delivering First Party Cloud Services with Hyperscalers to Accelerate the Journey to the Cloud
Jason McKinney, WW VP of Public Cloud Sales at NetApp
- Principles to Help Customers
- NetApp has three main mantras they follow: 1) Serve our customers (not sell), 2) Focus on joint investments with hyperscalers, and 3) Offer customer empathy in their journey to the cloud. - Transformation of Sales in the Cloud
- NetApp sees Marketplaces as channels to help their customers consume the way they want to consume. - NetApp’s strategy to collaborate
- NetApp is following a customer-centric strategy, focusing on customer empathy and organizational empathy, to help the customers with what they want and where they want to go. - Future Partnerships
- The essence of the future of partnerships is to lean into the changing dynamics of partnering and to collaborate together with partners to put the customers first.
“We're very proud of the fact that we had 171% growth year-over-year on the cloud … and we're continuing to grow!”
- Jason McKinney
Reaching New Customer Buying Centers by Co-Selling with your Ecosystem Partners
Julia Chen, Vice President, Partner Transformation at Cisco
- Partner Transformation
- Through the Partner Transformation Program, Cisco is helping its partners transform to get a greater share of wallet through partner enablement, training, and incentives. - The Line of Business (LOB) Buying Centers
- Cisco is helping its partners develop new muscle in reaching more powerful buying centers in lines of business where decisions are being made. This provides alignment for co-selling joint solutions and boosting recurring revenues. - Future Partnerships
- Cisco's expectations from their partners is the willingness to learn and improve from their learnings with constant inputs - Embracing the Transformation
- Serving customers is the prime driver for Cisco’s partnerships. Critical in the journey is to embrace and keep up with the pace of ecosystem transformation and to deeply and fully understand customer needs.
“If you’re not at the forefront of ecosystem selling, solution selling, experience selling, you stand to lose a lot.”
- Julia Chen
Have Questions?
If you have questions or want to chat with us, please reach out -- we'd love to hear from you!
Thanks again for making EBS a success. We'll see you at our next event!
P.S: Don’t miss out on partner ecosystem updates!
Join fellow ecosystem professionals and join WorkSpan’s Community where we regularly share tips, news, and podcasts from across the partner ecosystem landscape.
Chip is passionate about building strong communities and ecosystems around enterprises to build excitement for the category, deliver value for customers, and grow the business. Prior to WorkSpan, Chip was with SAP for over 13 years, most recently growing the SAP Community Network to over 2 million engaged customers, partners, and developers. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago and an engineering degree from Northwestern.
