#119 Susan Flake and Colin Goodwin: How Zebra Works with Partners to Improve Food Safety

With the challenges for covid and other health concerns, food safety and supply chain traceability are increasingly becoming a critical factor in keeping the nation and the world fed and healthy. Zebra Technologies optimizes their partner ecosystem to help their customers work to eliminate any food contamination on a massive scale.

In this episode, Susan Flake, Director and RFID Business Development, US and Colin Goodwin, ISV Business Development Manager at Zebra Technologies, join Ecosystem Aces and discuss how Zebra Technologies manages and optimizes their partner ecosystem to help front line workers in the food industry.

Susan and Colin share:

• How Zebra works with software partners to deliver innovation and value to customers
• The importance of digitizing food supply chains to deliver food safety and traceability
• How Zebra ensures their partners’ success

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How Zebra Creates a Win-Win Situation with Partners

Developing the best joint opportunities means working with the best partners. Zebra ensures that they are able to form these alliances by creating programs that reward their software partners. Not only does the company often provide funding and lower the costs of development gear for partners, but they also have a partner influence program. This program allows partners to generate opportunities for Zebra and notify the company how they can give support to close the deal. Partners are given credit depending on their level of influence on the opportunity.

Another way that Zebra creates a win-win is to help partners grow by getting them involved with the company’s resellers. Zebra’s software partners get kitted and staged which helps scale business from the software company’s customers as well as the company’s reseller customers.

How Zebra Optimizes their Partnerships

Put your partners in the best positions to succeed. Zebra makes a concerted effort to showcase their partner's most specialized offerings. The company identifies the best solutions their partners have to offer and then finds the appropriate opportunities that specifically require these services.

When assisting restaurants with inventory visibility, Zebra didn’t settle for simply finding partners in the vertical. They understand that even companies in the same vertical will have different specialties and capabilities. Because of this, the company continually grows its ecosystem of partners to ensure that they have partners specialized for each customer’s needs.

The Importance of RFID and IoT in Food Safety

According to Susan, 1 in 6 people get ill every day from food-borne illness. This issue is even more accelerated with covid affecting food production and slowing down food transport. Zebra and their partners work to digitize and optimize their customers’ workflows to increase food safety and traceability. Recently the company assisted several customers’ transition from tracking food inventory with pen and paper to being able to more accurately and rapidly capture this inventory digitally.

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

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