Goodbye Spreadsheets, Hello Go-To-Market Network for Alliances
Too often, tracking cross-organizational alliance initiatives involves complex spreadsheets. WorkSpan has a better way.
News & Press
Press Releases
February 21, 2018
Alliance Professionals Finally Have a Product to Call Their Own via WorkSpan
Debuts Alliance Automation for Running Joint, End-to-End Go-To-Market Initiatives
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—Feb. 22, 2018—WorkSpan, The Go-To-Market Network for Alliances, today announced the debut of the industry’s first integrated alliance automation system that enables alliance teams to engage, automate, and report on joint sales, marketing, and solution initiatives across companies on the cloud.
One shared network, unlimited shared opportunities.
In today’s globally connected world, no company goes to market alone. Alliance teams are responsible for go-to-market execution with alliance partners, system integrator partners, and top channel partners. Yet, alliance functions have not undergone digital transformations like sales and marketing functions have. This is why WorkSpan has purpose-built an alliance automation network to address key pain points of alliance professionals.
Alliance leaders can now deliver exponential growth for their companies by joining The WorkSpan Network and launching new initiatives faster, with a live network of peers at companies consisting of market leaders in: applications, public cloud, system integrators, security, IOT, operating systems, big data, and high-performance computing and converged systems.
To enable work that spans company boundaries, WorkSpan provides:
- Reporting: WorkSpan alleviates the lack of authoritative, real-time reporting and analytics that show the value of partner/alliance go-to-market efforts. This allows alliance leaders to show the impact of partnerships to their boards and to course-correct with the speed of business, instead of doing post-mortems in quarterly or annual business reviews.
- Automation: Alliance process automation that creates a shared system of record for joint sales opportunities, joint market development funds and marketing campaigns, and joint solutions—across all your strategic partners—while integrating with the internal sales and marketing systems of each company to provide authoritative, trusted, and secure data. This helps reduce the cost of managing partner/alliance initiatives—enabling teams to close more sales opportunities with 30 percent higher velocity and win rates, drive usage of joint funds from 60 percent to 95 percent, deliver 3X better ROI on joint marketing campaigns, and produce stellar joint solution launches.
- Engagement: WorkSpan unlocks the power of teams locally, regionally, and globally across companies, driving participation rates on go-to-market initiatives. Empowered teams get access to people, process, and data at their fingertips—enabling better decision-making.
Full-on, full-stack for your go-to-market alliances.
WorkSpan is designed to help companies exceed revenue goals and drive exponential growth, while providing greater visibility of alliance efforts. Unlike channel management tools, partner portals, and even alliance management by spreadsheet, WorkSpan provides a shared network that automates workflows across company boundaries—resulting in reduced manual work, increased go-to-market team participation, greater visibility into alliance activities, and confidence in achieving or exceeding revenue goals.
Driving alliance automation through partnerships.
WorkSpan also announced its first partners to help drive education and change management for alliance automation. Allan Adler, Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, said, “Digital Bridge is thrilled to align our Partner and Go-To-Market Strategy Practice with Workspan, the leading provider of alliance go-to-market technology solutions, to help our clients maximize the value of their strategic alliance relationships.”
“Alliance professionals have long been overlooked when it comes to an integrated and shared automation system to effectively do their jobs. But we see them, we hear them, and we have the right system for them,” commented Mayank Bawa, Co-Founder and CEO of WorkSpan. “With a shared system of record on The WorkSpan Go-To-Market Network, alliances can finally, for the first time, run joint initiatives from corporate to field, and from solutions to sales. With these new innovations, WorkSpan continues to deliver exponential results for strategic alliances.”
About WorkSpan
WorkSpan is The Go-To-Market Network for Alliances to automate and report on joint sales, marketing, and solution initiatives. We empower customers to engage, manage, and measure joint sales and joint marketing across their ecosystems and their partners’ ecosystems on a shared network to grow their business exponentially. WorkSpan is a privately held company backed by Mayfield and is currently in use by global enterprises including Intel, SAP, CenturyLink, Infosys, and Lenovo. For more information, visit WorkSpan.com and follow @WorkSpan on Twitter and LinkedIn.
# # #
Media Contact:
Laura Ruark for WorkSpan
540-599-7886
Laura@bospar.com
Propeller Insights Survey: Just 11% of Marketers Spend Their Budget Effectively
99 out of 100 marketing executives say it would be valuable to have a better handle on joint budgets when marketing with partners—46 percent say it would be “extremely valuable”
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–WorkSpan, The Go-To-Market Network for Alliances, today announced the results of a new survey that looked at the tools marketing executives use to track campaigns, how effectively their marketing budgets are being used and how they measure the success of campaigns.
The survey was conducted online within the United States by Propeller Insights on behalf of WorkSpan November 7-13, 2017, among 100 marketing executives—44 percent VPs of marketing, 32 percent CMOs and 24 percent SVPs of marketing. The results were weighted to the U.S. census for age, gender, region and income.
The trials and tribulations of marketing with partners
The top three concerns of American marketing executives are digital marketing (87 percent), product marketing (80 percent) and partner marketing (67 percent)—although 83 percent of senior level marketers aren’t using a partner management tool.
VPs, SVPs and CMOs unanimously agree that marketing with partners has benefits, prime among them:
- Increased lead generation — 58 percent
- Access to new potential customers — 50 percent
- New market segments — 50 percent
- Access to partner audiences and brand power — 48 percent
- Stronger media outreach & better social media content — 47 percent each
In terms of the pitfalls, marketing executives agree that the greatest challenges of marketing with partners are difficulty changing direction quickly to address market needs (35 percent), difficulty finding available partner marketing budgets (29 percent) and disagreement of focus (26 percent). Almost all—99 percent—of marketing executives think it would be valuable to have a better handle on joint budgets when marketing with partners—nearly half (46 percent) say it would be “extremely valuable.”
“Companies need to engage with thriving ecosystems of partners to make themselves strategic and valuable for their ecosystem, but this creates many potential complications and inefficiencies,” said Mayank Bawa, CEO and founder of WorkSpan. “We created WorkSpan to make joint marketing with partners accountable, innovative and impactful at scale—and to create unparalleled visibility throughout the process, making their campaigns more effective and helping them to put every cent of their marketing budgets to good use.”
Marketing processes rife with inefficiencies
Fewer than half of marketing executives (46 percent) work with teams in the same office; the majority work with teams that are regional (31 percent), cross-country (12 percent) or international (11 percent). Ninety-three percent of marketing executives find it difficult to collaborate internationally. Scheduling calls across timezones was identified as a top difficulty (41 percent), but pushing centralized plans to regional teams (43 percent) was ranked the number one challenge.
Only 11 percent of marketing executives say their yearly marketing budget is spent effectively, while more than 1 in 10 (13 percent) say only 0-25 percent is, and 15 percent say more than half of their annual partner co-marketing funds go unspent.
More than a quarter of marketing executives (27 percent) use at least 10 different pieces of software to collaborate with marketing partners and colleagues, including tools for:
- Content sharing – 55 percent
- CRM – 40 percent
- Marketing automation – 39 percent
- AdTech – 36 percent
- Content marketing – 27 percent
Nearly half (47 percent) spend more than four hours each week in meetings to review the progress of marketing projects, and more than three quarters (78 percent) say they employ a person whose sole job is to track campaign progress.
Added Bawa: “Marketing teams choose WorkSpan to share marketing campaigns with partners, manage joint programs and solutions, track demand-gen performance, access marketing funds and much more.”
When it comes to measuring the success of a given marketing campaign, top considerations for marketing executives include:
- Increased brand value – 59 percent
- Marketing qualified leads – 56 percent
- Revenue – 49 percent
- Opportunities created – 34 percent
- Increased net promoter score – 29 percent
Marketing executives think the Technology (44 percent), Banking/Finance (37 percent) and Telecommunications (36 percent) industries stand to benefit most from better coordinating their marketing efforts.
About WorkSpan
WorkSpan is a Marketing Network for ecosystems. We empower customers to discover, plan, fund, and measure joint marketing campaigns across their ecosystem and their partner’s ecosystems on a shared platform to grow their business exponentially. We deliver secure transparency and mutual accountability across company boundaries with velocity, scalability, and trust. WorkSpan is a privately held company backed by Mayfield and is currently in use by global enterprises including Intel, SAP, CenturyLink, Infosys, and Lenovo. For more information, visit WorkSpan.com and follow @WorkSpan on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Contacts
for WorkSpan
Laura Ruark, 540-599-7886
Laura@bospar.com
February 21, 2018
Alliance Professionals Finally Have a Product to Call Their Own via WorkSpan
Debuts Alliance Automation for Running Joint, End-to-End Go-To-Market Initiatives
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—Feb. 22, 2018—WorkSpan, The Go-To-Market Network for Alliances, today announced the debut of the industry’s first integrated alliance automation system that enables alliance teams to engage, automate, and report on joint sales, marketing, and solution initiatives across companies on the cloud.
One shared network, unlimited shared opportunities.
In today’s globally connected world, no company goes to market alone. Alliance teams are responsible for go-to-market execution with alliance partners, system integrator partners, and top channel partners. Yet, alliance functions have not undergone digital transformations like sales and marketing functions have. This is why WorkSpan has purpose-built an alliance automation network to address key pain points of alliance professionals.
Alliance leaders can now deliver exponential growth for their companies by joining The WorkSpan Network and launching new initiatives faster, with a live network of peers at companies consisting of market leaders in: applications, public cloud, system integrators, security, IOT, operating systems, big data, and high-performance computing and converged systems.
To enable work that spans company boundaries, WorkSpan provides:
- Reporting: WorkSpan alleviates the lack of authoritative, real-time reporting and analytics that show the value of partner/alliance go-to-market efforts. This allows alliance leaders to show the impact of partnerships to their boards and to course-correct with the speed of business, instead of doing post-mortems in quarterly or annual business reviews.
- Automation: Alliance process automation that creates a shared system of record for joint sales opportunities, joint market development funds and marketing campaigns, and joint solutions—across all your strategic partners—while integrating with the internal sales and marketing systems of each company to provide authoritative, trusted, and secure data. This helps reduce the cost of managing partner/alliance initiatives—enabling teams to close more sales opportunities with 30 percent higher velocity and win rates, drive usage of joint funds from 60 percent to 95 percent, deliver 3X better ROI on joint marketing campaigns, and produce stellar joint solution launches.
- Engagement: WorkSpan unlocks the power of teams locally, regionally, and globally across companies, driving participation rates on go-to-market initiatives. Empowered teams get access to people, process, and data at their fingertips—enabling better decision-making.
Full-on, full-stack for your go-to-market alliances.
WorkSpan is designed to help companies exceed revenue goals and drive exponential growth, while providing greater visibility of alliance efforts. Unlike channel management tools, partner portals, and even alliance management by spreadsheet, WorkSpan provides a shared network that automates workflows across company boundaries—resulting in reduced manual work, increased go-to-market team participation, greater visibility into alliance activities, and confidence in achieving or exceeding revenue goals.
Driving alliance automation through partnerships.
WorkSpan also announced its first partners to help drive education and change management for alliance automation. Allan Adler, Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, said, “Digital Bridge is thrilled to align our Partner and Go-To-Market Strategy Practice with Workspan, the leading provider of alliance go-to-market technology solutions, to help our clients maximize the value of their strategic alliance relationships.”
“Alliance professionals have long been overlooked when it comes to an integrated and shared automation system to effectively do their jobs. But we see them, we hear them, and we have the right system for them,” commented Mayank Bawa, Co-Founder and CEO of WorkSpan. “With a shared system of record on The WorkSpan Go-To-Market Network, alliances can finally, for the first time, run joint initiatives from corporate to field, and from solutions to sales. With these new innovations, WorkSpan continues to deliver exponential results for strategic alliances.”
About WorkSpan
WorkSpan is The Go-To-Market Network for Alliances to automate and report on joint sales, marketing, and solution initiatives. We empower customers to engage, manage, and measure joint sales and joint marketing across their ecosystems and their partners’ ecosystems on a shared network to grow their business exponentially. WorkSpan is a privately held company backed by Mayfield and is currently in use by global enterprises including Intel, SAP, CenturyLink, Infosys, and Lenovo. For more information, visit WorkSpan.com and follow @WorkSpan on Twitter and LinkedIn.
# # #
Media Contact:
Laura Ruark for WorkSpan
540-599-7886
Laura@bospar.com
January 11, 2018
Propeller Insights Survey: Just 11% of Marketers Spend Their Budget Effectively
99 out of 100 marketing executives say it would be valuable to have a better handle on joint budgets when marketing with partners—46 percent say it would be “extremely valuable”
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–WorkSpan, The Go-To-Market Network for Alliances, today announced the results of a new survey that looked at the tools marketing executives use to track campaigns, how effectively their marketing budgets are being used and how they measure the success of campaigns.
The survey was conducted online within the United States by Propeller Insights on behalf of WorkSpan November 7-13, 2017, among 100 marketing executives—44 percent VPs of marketing, 32 percent CMOs and 24 percent SVPs of marketing. The results were weighted to the U.S. census for age, gender, region and income.
The trials and tribulations of marketing with partners
The top three concerns of American marketing executives are digital marketing (87 percent), product marketing (80 percent) and partner marketing (67 percent)—although 83 percent of senior level marketers aren’t using a partner management tool.
VPs, SVPs and CMOs unanimously agree that marketing with partners has benefits, prime among them:
- Increased lead generation — 58 percent
- Access to new potential customers — 50 percent
- New market segments — 50 percent
- Access to partner audiences and brand power — 48 percent
- Stronger media outreach & better social media content — 47 percent each
In terms of the pitfalls, marketing executives agree that the greatest challenges of marketing with partners are difficulty changing direction quickly to address market needs (35 percent), difficulty finding available partner marketing budgets (29 percent) and disagreement of focus (26 percent). Almost all—99 percent—of marketing executives think it would be valuable to have a better handle on joint budgets when marketing with partners—nearly half (46 percent) say it would be “extremely valuable.”
“Companies need to engage with thriving ecosystems of partners to make themselves strategic and valuable for their ecosystem, but this creates many potential complications and inefficiencies,” said Mayank Bawa, CEO and founder of WorkSpan. “We created WorkSpan to make joint marketing with partners accountable, innovative and impactful at scale—and to create unparalleled visibility throughout the process, making their campaigns more effective and helping them to put every cent of their marketing budgets to good use.”
Marketing processes rife with inefficiencies
Fewer than half of marketing executives (46 percent) work with teams in the same office; the majority work with teams that are regional (31 percent), cross-country (12 percent) or international (11 percent). Ninety-three percent of marketing executives find it difficult to collaborate internationally. Scheduling calls across timezones was identified as a top difficulty (41 percent), but pushing centralized plans to regional teams (43 percent) was ranked the number one challenge.
Only 11 percent of marketing executives say their yearly marketing budget is spent effectively, while more than 1 in 10 (13 percent) say only 0-25 percent is, and 15 percent say more than half of their annual partner co-marketing funds go unspent.
More than a quarter of marketing executives (27 percent) use at least 10 different pieces of software to collaborate with marketing partners and colleagues, including tools for:
- Content sharing – 55 percent
- CRM – 40 percent
- Marketing automation – 39 percent
- AdTech – 36 percent
- Content marketing – 27 percent
Nearly half (47 percent) spend more than four hours each week in meetings to review the progress of marketing projects, and more than three quarters (78 percent) say they employ a person whose sole job is to track campaign progress.
Added Bawa: “Marketing teams choose WorkSpan to share marketing campaigns with partners, manage joint programs and solutions, track demand-gen performance, access marketing funds and much more.”
When it comes to measuring the success of a given marketing campaign, top considerations for marketing executives include:
- Increased brand value – 59 percent
- Marketing qualified leads – 56 percent
- Revenue – 49 percent
- Opportunities created – 34 percent
- Increased net promoter score – 29 percent
Marketing executives think the Technology (44 percent), Banking/Finance (37 percent) and Telecommunications (36 percent) industries stand to benefit most from better coordinating their marketing efforts.
About WorkSpan
WorkSpan is a Marketing Network for ecosystems. We empower customers to discover, plan, fund, and measure joint marketing campaigns across their ecosystem and their partner’s ecosystems on a shared platform to grow their business exponentially. We deliver secure transparency and mutual accountability across company boundaries with velocity, scalability, and trust. WorkSpan is a privately held company backed by Mayfield and is currently in use by global enterprises including Intel, SAP, CenturyLink, Infosys, and Lenovo. For more information, visit WorkSpan.com and follow @WorkSpan on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Contacts
for WorkSpan
Laura Ruark, 540-599-7886
Laura@bospar.com
In The News
January 10, 2018
The Global Economy is Changing the Way We Collaborate
As we become a more global business society, we’re seeing a lot more companies collaborating with other companies – which can present the challenge of keeping confidential information secret, while still effectively working with outsiders. Provided they can get past these barriers, businesses can gain a competitive edge by leveraging the resources of a partner.
IBRS Technology Industry Analyst Dr. Joe Sweeney Reviews WorkSpan
Former VP of Research at Gartner, and current technology industry analyst for IBRS, Dr. Joe Sweeney shares his impressions of WorkSpan after a recent briefing and demonstration. Read his thoughts on why WorkSpan isn’t simply another vendor in the already-crowded “collaboration” category, but instead provides a purpose-driven solution helping alliances jointly plan, fund, and measure program performance across companies to more effectively execute joint go-to-market initiatives.
WorkSpan’s CEO & Founder Mayank Bawa on Joint Go-To-Market Alliances
Digital innovation is driving the move to bring together the organization’s own systems and contributions from outsourcers and “as a service” providers. As many recent studies back it up, more and more marketers remain committed to a best-of-breed approach to vendor selection rather than seeking the advantages of single-source solutions.
Goodbye Spreadsheets, Hello Go-To-Market Network for Alliances
If your go-to-market plans involve working with partners, whether it’s one or one hundred, you know how complicated it can get managing the relationship and shared programs.
WorkSpan Launches Go-To-Market Network for Alliances
The company says this is the first to allow management of multiple initiatives between an unlimited number of businesses.
WorkSpan Raises $9 Million for Go-To-Market Network for Alliances
Redwood City-based WorkSpan has raised a $9 million Series A led by Mayfield Fund for its alliance go-to-market networking platform.
WorkSpan Marks Global Debut With $9 Million Series A Funding
A new Silicon Valley startup is aiming to make it easier for alliances to go-to-market across channels, teams, and regions.
WorkSpan Secures $9M In Funding, Announces General Availability
Using WorkSpan, alliances can establish a shared system of record; align, create and share programs; and propagate them to internal and external partners, according to the company.
WorkSpan Allows Companies to Redefine How They Engage with Strategic Partners
Companies need to engage with thriving ecosystems of partners to make themselves strategic and valuable for their ecosystem.
January 10, 2018
The Global Economy is Changing the Way We Collaborate
As we become a more global business society, we’re seeing a lot more companies collaborating with other companies – which can present the challenge of keeping confidential information secret, while still effectively working with outsiders. Provided they can get past these barriers, businesses can gain a competitive edge by leveraging the resources of a partner.
November 7, 2017
IBRS Technology Industry Analyst Dr. Joe Sweeney Reviews WorkSpan
Former VP of Research at Gartner, and current technology industry analyst for IBRS, Dr. Joe Sweeney shares his impressions of WorkSpan after a recent briefing and demonstration. Read his thoughts on why WorkSpan isn’t simply another vendor in the already-crowded “collaboration” category, but instead provides a purpose-driven solution helping alliances jointly plan, fund, and measure program performance across companies to more effectively execute joint go-to-market initiatives.
October 27, 2017
WorkSpan’s CEO & Founder Mayank Bawa on Joint Go-To-Market Alliances
Digital innovation is driving the move to bring together the organization’s own systems and contributions from outsourcers and “as a service” providers. As many recent studies back it up, more and more marketers remain committed to a best-of-breed approach to vendor selection rather than seeking the advantages of single-source solutions.
October 6, 2017
Goodbye Spreadsheets, Hello Go-To-Market Network for Alliances
If your go-to-market plans involve working with partners, whether it’s one or one hundred, you know how complicated it can get managing the relationship and shared programs.
September 26, 2017
WorkSpan Launches Go-To-Market Network for Alliances
The company says this is the first to allow management of multiple initiatives between an unlimited number of businesses.
September 6, 2017
WorkSpan Raises $9 Million for Go-To-Market Network for Alliances
Redwood City-based WorkSpan has raised a $9 million Series A led by Mayfield Fund for its alliance go-to-market networking platform.
September 1, 2017
WorkSpan Marks Global Debut With $9 Million Series A Funding
A new Silicon Valley startup is aiming to make it easier for alliances to go-to-market across channels, teams, and regions.
August 23, 2017
WorkSpan Secures $9M In Funding, Announces General Availability
Using WorkSpan, alliances can establish a shared system of record; align, create and share programs; and propagate them to internal and external partners, according to the company.
August 23, 2017
WorkSpan Allows Companies to Redefine How They Engage with Strategic Partners
Companies need to engage with thriving ecosystems of partners to make themselves strategic and valuable for their ecosystem.