#134 Satish Shenoy: Start Up, Scale Up, Scale Out: An Ecosystem Growth Guide

Pioneers in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) industry, Blue Prism, is a market leader when it comes to intelligent automation. With over 2000 customers based in more than 150 countries, Blue Prism has over 300 partners, including GSIs, technology partners, value-added resellers, advisory partners, etc. 

In this episode of Ecosystem Aces, Chip Rodgers sits down with Satish Shenoy, Regional Vice President, Strategic Technology Alliances & Partnerships, Blue Prism, to talk about the company’s strong Partner Ecosystem and operations. 

Satish discusses:

•  Finding the right technology partners
• Customer-centric, partner-engaged, product-enabled, solution-led approach
• Startup, scale up, and scale out Go-To-Market strategy 

Finding the Right Technology Partners

Blue Prism is a partner-friendly company, and they have achieved 98% customer retention thanks to the right business strategies. At first, Blue Prism focused on financial services but has expanded to healthcare, telecom, utilities, and other industries. 

With over 125 partners, it’s important to build assets and co-innovate to help both customers and partners. Every company looks at global giants like Oracle, Microsoft, Google, etc., but there are many tech companies impacting particular geographies, verticals, and uses. 

Satish focuses on a sales-in approach and builds solutions that have a demand in the market. When customers want automation within a certain platform, they will look for the right solutions. The company’s consulting, delivery, and other partners give market feedback to the partner team and help Blue Prism find ideal partnerships. 

The Blue Prism team also factors in market trends, stats, and feedback from top analysts to build their partner strategy and offer maximum value to customers. 

Customer-Centric, Partner-Engaged, Product-Enabled, Solution-Led Approach

Satish’s approach in partnering is captured in the four steps of being “customer-centric, partner-engaged, product-enabled, and solution-led. This means always keeping the customer in mind as your north star, bringing partners in to help deliver the best overall solution, and leveraging products from you and your partners to create the best possible overall solution for customers.

Satish talks about following the money to develop the best solutions, but it’s ultimately about providing value to customers and solving their challenges. There may be a need in the market, certain geography, or a certain platform that requires process automation. A single solution cannot solve every customer’s demand, and many variables can factor in. 

Through RPA enhanced by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Blue Prism offers the highest value to customers, gets the most return on investment, and focuses on solving specific industry needs. This enables customers and businesses to use Blue Prism’s products and solutions easily. 

Startup, Scale Up, and Scale Out Go-To-Market Strategy

Satish speaks about how Blue Prism focuses on getting incremental value from their partners. 

• The first thing is to see what partners are creating value and are they receiving an ideal return for it.
• Next identify the synergies, verticals, geographies, and platforms that need to be focused on.
• Finally comes co-innovating and building ideal solutions with partners. Customers know about Blue Prism and its various partners. Effective partner integrations are created to win deals and raise the momentum of go-to-market strategy. 

Bringing partners onboard and growing joint business requires a process. Satish shared another terrific best practice in partnering to “startup, scale up, and scale out new partners in your joint GTM. Startup includes setting joint accounts and developing solutions for specific verticals. Scale up phase means starting with a couple of joint customers and growing to more and then scale out means expanding to general availability and co-selling to a broader ecosystem. 

Some partnerships grow slowly, while some of them grow quickly. For such partnerships, Blue Prism has incentives in place to raise the momentum of sales. 

The sales team gets sales incentives, tech partners receive MDFs, while some incentives work as an extension where a base product is upgraded to premium. More investments are made into partnerships that drive the highest value for Blue Prism, their partners, and customers. 

Summing Up

Satish understands the Partner Ecosystem thoroughly and that working together as a team is critical for joint success. The customer-centric, partner-engaged, solution-led, product-enabled mantra has made Blue Prism’s partner system one of the best in the industry. 

To know more about Blue Prism and stay in touch with what Satish does for the company’s global partner strategy, you can connect with him on LinkedIn. Identifying the partners who offer incremental value and investing in them is the key to success in Partner Ecosystems. 

Links & Resources

• Learn more about how WorkSpan helps customers accelerate their ecosystem flywheel through Co-selling, Co-innovating, Co-investing, and Co-marketing.
• Join the WorkSpan Community to engage with other partner ecosystem leaders on best practices, news, events, jobs, and other tips to advance your career in partnering.
• Find insightful articles on how to lead and get the most out of your partner ecosystem on the WorkSpan blog.
• Download the Best Practices Guide for Ecosystem Business Management
• Download the Ultimate Guide for Partner Incentives and Market Development Funds 
• To contact the host, Chip Rodgers, with topic ideas, suggest a guest, or join the conversation about modern partnering, he can be reached on Twitter, LinkedIn, or send Chip an email at: chip@workspan.com