Many firms find channel partners to be extremely advantageous, since they can increase sales, generate new revenue streams, and provide access to a variety of shared resources. Vlad Postelnicu, Director Alliances & Strategic Partnerships, Software AG, elaborates on their relationship with their partner and the role played by them in growth.
How would you describe the market for digital transformation in the Middle East?
The Middle East is one of the most advanced markets globally in terms of transformation and crisis. The last 12-14 months have proven this with organizations being digitally ready or in the process and have proven to be most resilient. Driven by national vision and ICT goals, the public and private sectors have been playing a major role and has continued to make great strides in building a robust digital infrastructure that empowers innovation and unlocks new opportunities. Economic strategies like the UAE’s Centennial alone, another wider national economic development and diversification initiative, also boasts a strong theme around digitalization and transformation.
The banking and financial services sector is another segment that is transforming rapidly; for instance, the move towards digital banking with initiatives such as open banking amongst several others. The energy segment is also a strong digitally-driven segment that is fast shifting focus from resources to technologies. 2021 and the years to come will continue to witness immense technological innovation across the Middle East for economic and industrial development.
In such a competitive market, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition? What are the key elements of your channel program?
Speaking purely from a channel/ partner ecosystem PoV, Software AG strongly believes that partners are the cornerstone of the firm’s growth strategy and hence its operating model is based on partners being at the core of the business strategy. The channel ecosystem isn’t only an engine of growth but also of stability that drives the needed business growth. Moreover, their relentless focus on customer value to garner continued success in meeting customer needs enables Software AG to stay ahead of the competition. Software AG’s commitment to the channel partner ecosystem as part of its larger PartnerConnect Program includes extended learning journeys and certifications and badges remains a priority to drive collaborative growth. The key elements of the Software AG partner enablement are:
- Automated self-service access: a robust and proven infrastructure to provide fully automated self-service access for training, content, and collateral via a single sign-on on PartnerHub, the learning model.
- Partner learning journeys: Role-based pathways combining self-study content with formal training and external sources to build skills and competencies and prepare for Software AG solutions’ badging and certifications.
- Badging & certification: Formal confirmation to attest a defined skill and verify partner competence
Elaborate on your recent partnership with Redington and also highlight which all countries will this partnership cover in the region?
Distribution models have always been adopted by vendors around the world. In the Middle East, in particular, the Redington partnership is another collaboration that will further enable drive Software AG’s continued growth potential as one of the region’s most reputable distributors. As a well-equipped partner on board that comes with long-standing expertise, the partnership has already started witnessing the momentum and promising opportunities needed to drive the constant double-digit growth for Software AG Middle East.
How do you enable your partners to be aligned with your goals and what kind of support do you offer to the channel?
Software AG is investing significantly in growing through and with partners. Any robust partnership would mean a shared vision of what is expected to accomplish. In this case, as well, mutual and synergized goals as part of the vendor-partner alliance by combining resources and expertise to garner optimum value for the customer is how Software AG aligns with its partners ahead of the launch of the initiative.
Software AG’s PartnerConnect program represents 400+ businesses and technology partnerships were globally launched earlier this year. The program includes an updated portal, training, and incentives to help ensure partners meet evolving needs, increase profit and experience a strong ROI. Software AG partnerships in collaboration with its channel partners aim to deliver a complete cycle of transformation for any given customer implementation, from opportunity sourcing to delivering the business need through the transformation journey, in addition to the post-delivery support.
Another vital area of collaborations also includes specific partnership engagements that are tailored to focus on growth areas of Software AG, such as IoT. The partnership with du and Software AG for IoT launched last year focuses primarily on IoT to collaboratively secure IoT adoption and implementations as one of the main telco providers for businesses in the city.
At Software AG, we believe a successful partner is able to cover the complete lifecycle of any customer engagement along with us. From sourcing an opportunity and all the way to have the ability to conduct presentations, demos that showcase the value that Software AG technologies will lend to customers as well as active participation in acquiring a customer and post-acquisition support that is the most vital element of the journey. For this reason, in addition to providing learning avenues, we invest significantly in our channel teams that actively support the growth of our partners.
With our expectation from partners to fully align with Software AG’s way of operations, we provide them with access and inclusion to any developments and resources akin to that of an employee. Therefore, all product material, documentation and presentations are available 1-1 to all partners, unique in channel software ecosystems. Certain partnership engagements are also custom-tailored and designed to focus on specific growth areas such as IoT.
How do you ensure channel partners work with you despite the increasing competition?
The value of Software AG tech is evident to customers as one can immediately compute ROI base cases that are demonstrated quite easily thereby providing confidence to our partners too. At the same time, Software AG’s transformation services reflect results on business objectives against ‘nice to have’ enhancements. Through our partner program, we provide autonomy and freedom to drive opportunities and manage accounts independently in most cases for our partners. This is evident of our longstanding relationship and trust in them which goes beyond the defined contractual engagements. Our strategic partner programs also focus on different technologies and territories to foster growth.
Moreover, Software AG implementations require well skilled and expert consultants for excellent revenue opportunities and this aspect is highly valuable from our partners. They are not only marketing and reselling Software AG licenses, but also capitalizing on service projects post installations. We are really proud of their abilities to offer this as our customers can avail of valuable post-project support and troubleshooting while the teams are getting used to the new systems.
Therefore, we anchor our partnership on symbiotic growth and development for long term gains.
Which are your key markets and what are your plans to increase your footprint in the region?
While we have a strong lineage of 50+years globally, we commenced our regional footprint 8 years ago in UAE and have engaged with some of the biggest government and private organizations in the country, driving heavy-duty large transformation mandates for them. Some of our key customers are Smart Dubai government, GDRFA, Dubai Municipality, etc. and we have aligned to their long-term vision announced by the strong leadership of the country. In addition, we also have a strong presence in Oman, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, KSA etc. In Kuwait, many banking sector companies are operating on Software AG’s technologies with an on-ground team of experts. We have engaged in strategic OEM partnerships which extend beyond reselling, thereby embedding our technologies across various platforms.
What kind of growth are you expecting in the next 12 months?
In the last 7-8 years, we have recorded double-digit growth YoY despite the external factors and our recent investments in the region is expected to keep this growth trajectory intact.
What message would you like to give to channel partners, both existing and prospective?
The foundation of any business is communication as its run by people. A vendor-channel partnership is no different and it is important to sustain a healthy flow of information between both parties on an ongoing basis. Globally, Software AG believes in our channel partners as a key growth engine for the company due to their deep understanding of the local fabric and requirements and we will continue to do so.
