We brought in Chris Morgan, Global VP of Partners & Alliances at UiPath for the Alliance Aces Podcast to share lessons on what he’s learned about alliances.
Over the last 3 months, UiPath has experienced explosive growth, hiring 15 people a day for the last 3 months, finalizing Series-c funding, and has now partnered with every notable enterprise logo, including Google, to create some of the world’s most advanced robotics.
Alliances & Solutions Must Remain Insanely Customer-Centric
Most alliances are formed as some sort of marketing gimmick. A shake of hands, a press release, and nothing else. Chris wants no part in a marketing product. He’s a solutions guy.
He wants real partnerships, with real customer-oriented solutions. If the other party isn’t truly interested in innovating for the end-user, Chris will pass to the next alliance option. (Which, right now, is a pretty long list.) Google, Microsoft, Oracle, PwC, and every other enterprise brand you can conjure is involved with UiPath.
And every single one is helping create a true customer-centric solution.
Chris describes UiPath as heavily dependent and incredibly grateful for their alliances.
Partners and customers have managed to come up with solutions UiPath never imagined.
One use case, for instance, was automating a coding upgrade from a legacy system to new tech. Later, Google was having a difficult time turning an action verb they mined from data into a machine action. They partnered with UiPath to solve it with robotics.
New, Young Alliances Are Expensive & Risky. Here’s How You Entice Them
Integrating a new partner into an ecosystem can be expensive. The training alone for UiPath tech is at least 2 1/2 weeks. When you’re a young company (UiPath only went to market a couple years ago), there’s also a huge risk involved for the partners in the event you don’t survive.
UiPath formed something unique to help partners mitigate these risks: They have a $25MM fund with two distinct parts. Part of the fund is used to educate and train alliance members on the RPA technology. The other portion of the money actually funds partner initiatives — alliance members can apply for the funding by submitting proposals in a Shark Tank-like setting. If accepted, they will receive funding for the joint solution.
This VC-feel for alliances within their ecosystem has really started a wildfire. At a recent webinar, they had over 500 partners online. After the call, the leader received almost 50 proposals in 2 days. “It’s been like a tidal wave for us.”
3 Unique Alliance Strategy Tips
They have an overwhelming amount of partners wanting to join their ecosystem. Perhaps one major reason is that their approach is so different. Here are 3 ways Chris has continually motivated current alliances and attracted new ones:
- Dedication: Over 20% of their entire workforce is dedicated to partner interactions. (Currently, that means right around 400 out of 2,000 are dedicated solely to alliances.)
- Education: We already mentioned the $25MM fund. Besides that, they have a free online academy anyone can use to dive into their RPA tech.
- Open Source Code: Want to give it a try? Potential partners, individual developers, academics, and others can download the software for free here.
Last Tip: Innovate With Your Go-to-Market Strategy as Much as Your Solution
Lastly: Most tech companies are very engineer-based. The code comprises the majority of the creative. But that’s where Chris comes in — he brings decades of Silicon Valley alliance expertise; he’s worked with AT&T, Sun, Palm, Net App, Nutanix, and others.
He knows how much you can differentiate with your go-to-market strategy. “In tech, go-to-market is almost an afterthought.” Again, here is where Chris stressed the importance of customer-centricity. He starts and ends every alliance question with “how will this benefit the customer?”
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to the Alliance Aces Podcast, or visit our dedicated Alliance Aces page.
This episode is part of the Alliance Aces Roadshow. Watch the video interview on Facebook.
To contact the host, Chip Rodgers, with topic ideas, suggest a guest, or join the conversation about alliances, he can be reached by:
- Email: chip@workspan.com
- Twitter: @chiprodgers
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chiprodgers
