Altec Concludes the P2P Journey Experience
This week (July 10th – 14th), we are in Toronto at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) sharing about Altec’s experience with the P2P Maturity Model. We thought it’d be fitting to also share our experience with online readers too! Please note that this guest post chronicling Altec’s journey was written by Shann McGrail.
Part III
It is the conclusion of Altec’s P2P Journey Experience but it is definitely not the end of the story. Over the course of the last few weeks, April Blankenship, Director of Marketing and Gabriela Morales, Channel Program Manager have teamed together to review Altec’s partnership channels using IAMCP’s best practices for approaching P2P. April and Gabriela wholeheartedly engaged in the effort, using the prescribed P2P framework to search for ways to drive more successful partnerships that yield bigger results.
The P2P Journey Experience guided Altec through an introduction of P2P Maturity Model concepts and an assessment of the company’s current state of partnership agility. The Journey Experience came to a close with a set of recommendations and opportunities to pursue to enhance Altec’s existing programs.
In this blog post, April and Gabriela share their thoughts on the P2P assessment and how the overall experience has influenced the next steps with respect to Altec’s partner program. Specifically, they touch on how the experience has influenced decision making, identified opportunities to be more strategic, and uncovered areas where tracking additional business metrics will help keep them on the path to revenue growth.
Shaping the Future. Using the P2P approach has given Altec a new perspective on the direction in which it wants to take its partnering program. In some of the critical areas for partner success, using the P2P approach has confirmed that Altec is on the right path. In other areas, it has helped Altec review and alter plans to maximize business impact. April and Gabriela plan to share the learning from this high-value experience with their leadership team to support making decisions about priorities and investments moving forward.
Strategic Approach. To date, Altec’s partner strategy sessions have been a yearly process. Moving to more frequent meetings will help both partners and Altec to make any adjustments required to hit its targets, increase the number of deals, and make supporting investments as needed.
“Based on what we learned, we have identified a couple of areas where we can be more strategic in how we build our partner relationships and drive revenue,” said Gabriela. An example of an area where being more strategic would be of value surrounds reporting. Altec identified that if it were to provide quarterly reports to its sales team, it would facilitate conversations with partners about areas of strength and opportunities for additional focus. It would also allow teams to create action plans for the next quarter, laying the foundation for a regular rhythm of a joint business planning process with partners.
Measuring Success. Through P2P Journey Experience discussions, April and Gabriela identified that by adding new measures of success, they introduce the potential to deliver bigger benefits to Altec. April elaborated with an example, “In addition to the normal revenue metrics that we track, we can additionally consider how much ISV revenue we influence for Microsoft with our partners. We are also looking at other measurement examples and best practices to see what will work best for Altec.”
In addition, measuring partner satisfaction in new ways made the list of priority areas and represents an opportunity for further investigation. “Getting proactive feedback directly from partners will help us to make the right investments. We want to invest in initiatives that will enable our partners to close more deals and drive more revenue, an important goal for us,” emphasized April about this takeaway.
The Journey Continues
April and Gabriela fully embraced and incorporated P2P Journey Experience insights into their plans to take Altec’s partnership program to the next level. Wanting to gain more experience with the power of P2P and to build their road to increased revenue, the Altec team has signed up for the ISV Accelerator Program. Through that program, they plan to dig deeper into the rich assets and resources of the Microsoft Partner Network. They have also signed up for the P2P Coaching Webinar Series to enhance their joint business planning process and prepare to make the most of Microsoft’s upcoming Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto—a conference where 15,000 partner representatives will be in attendance. The Altec team is looking forward to making new partner connections at WPC and sharing its P2P Journey story with them.
About the P2P Journey Experience
IAMCP and Microsoft are working with three partners to help them apply the P2P model to their business and assess their P2P opportunities. The experience of those organizations will be shared through a series of blog postings highlighting the beginning, middle, and end points of the P2P journey.
