WorkSpan Solution Map

Partners want to build solutions around your portfolio of products. Your company needs to build solutions around your partners’ portfolio of products. You need a place to plan your investments together with your partners, such that you coordinate with your ecosystem intentionally – ensuring that your partners are investing across the spectrum for the full breadth of your customers’ needs.

Without Collaborative Portfolio Planning, you risk having your partners over-invest in “hot” areas making that area super-competitive for your partners and therefore less rewarding for them in the long term. You also risk having your partners miss areas that will create tremendous value for your customers – exposing your portfolio to risk of losing market share.

Partners want to work with you to build solutions around your portfolio of products. You have to guide them on your internal processes, check-lists and gates that helps put together solutions that are ready for your sellers or channel to sell. Conversely, your partners also have their own internal processes, check-lists and gates.

Without collaborative Idea to Launch, your partners experience your processes as a “black box”. They are not sure how many steps they have to take to reach your field. This lack of visibility results in a lack of planning and tracking, which delays time to market of your joint solutions.

Partners want to work with you to scale their sales for their solutions built around your portfolio of products. You have to guide them on how to engage with your sellers or channel — receive incoming leads from them or your sellers or your channel, jointly assess leads with them, engage with your field during the selling process, and track each opportunity through closure.

Without collaborative Launch to Scale, your partners experience your go-to-market as a “black box”. They are not sure if you are promoting their solutions through your marketing, if your sellers or your channel are engaging with customers around their solutions. They do not know who needs their SME help nor do they know how to provide their help.

Partners want to work with you to review performance of their solutions built around your portfolio of products. They want to share their performance with you, and expect you to share your performance with them.

Without a collaborative Review Performance, your partners receive an ad-hoc perception of performance of their joint solutions. It is hard for your to articulate their contribution to your company’s performance. It is hard for your partners to articulate your contribution to their company’s performance.

Partners want to work with you to publish their solutions to your marketplace. You have to guide them on your internal processes, check-lists and gates that helps put together solutions that are ready for your sellers or channel to sell. Conversely, your partners also have their own internal processes, check-lists and gates.

Without collaborative Apply to Publish, your partners experience your processes as a “black box”. They are not sure how many steps they have to take to reach your field. This lack of visibility results in a lack of planning and tracking, which delays time to market of your joint solutions.

Partners want to build marketing & enablement plans around your portfolio of products and services. Your company needs to build marketing and enablement plans around your partners’ portfolio of products and services. You need a place to plan your investments together with your partners, such that you coordinate with your ecosystem intentionally – ensuring that your partners are investing across the spectrum of your joint audiences.

Without Collaborative Marketing Planning, you risk having your partners over-invest in “hot” areas and under-invest in many market segments. You risk mis-aligned marketing, where partners bid against you making it cost higher for the same set of leads. You risk not having an intentional execution plan to achieve your shared revenue goals.

Partners want to work with you to do marketing and enablement around your portfolio of products. You have to enable their field teams – across regions, industries and LOBs – to submit their marketing activity proposals, review their ideas, guide them on their performance goals, their audience segments and their marketing message till they are ready to execute.

Without collaborative Propose to Ready, your partners experience your company as a “black box”. They are not sure if they are making the right decisions, investing in the right activities, setting the right performance goals, or sending the right marketing message that would work for them and for you.

Partners want to execute with you on marketing around your portfolio of products and services. You have to enable their field teams and your field teams – across regions, industries and LOBs – to drive audiences to joint marketing activities. You have to track performance for each activity so that you can do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

Without collaborative Ready to Done, your partners experience their performance as a “black box”. They are not sure if their activities are under-performing in your ecosystem. You don’t know their performance – they do not know the performance you saw for their activities. There is no mechanism to exchange leads that are best for you or them to pursue. There is no tracking for leads sourced or influenced through revenue attribution.

Partners want to review their marketing and enablement performance with you. You have to normalize marketing and enablement performance across your ecosystem – so that the best performers know what they are doing is right and can continue to execute; the poor performers know what they are doing is not working and can start doing activities that are working for others in the ecosystem.

Without collaborative Performance Review, your partners experience marketing and enablement with you as a “black box”. They are not sure if their investments are working for their partnership or not. You are not lifting up the ROI for every dollar invested in your ecosystem. As a result, your ecosystem under-performs.

Partners want to build sales plans around your portfolio of products and services and around your shared accounts. You need a place to plan your sales together with your partners, such that you coordinate with your ecosystem intentionally – ensuring that the right goals are being set and the right activities are happening in driving revenue across all field teams – across regions, industries and LOBs.

Without Collaborative Sales Planning, you risk having your partners mis-aligned on your shared goals. You risk mis-aligned selling, where partners are pursuing opportunities and generating a pipeline that has lower win rates or lower profitability. You risk not having an intentional execution plan to achieve your shared revenue goals with your ecosystem.

Partners and you share leads and opportunities with each other even before they are registered in your CRM. You need a place to record your partner sourced and partner planned opportunities in accounts. This is your “pre-pipeline” — it will eventually become a pipeline when your sellers engage and create an opportunity in CRM. It often takes 2-3 months before this opportunity appears in CRM.

Without Managing your Pre-Pipeline, you risk having your partner sourced and partner planned leads and opportunities be recorded in spreadsheets or emails. The ball often gets dropped or actions don’t get followed up on – many times at your end by your sellers. Later, for the pre-pipeline that ends up as an opportunity in your CRM, your partners are not tagged. As a result, they are not rewarded for their work that started 2-3 months before your seller got engaged. This lowers trust in your partnership and hurts your ecosystem revenue.

Partners want to leverage your SME in their engagements with their customers. They want to leverage your expertise around your products and services to engage with their customers better and serve their customers better. You need a place to record nominated opportunities from your partner where they want to engage with you – to help them with assessments, their opportunity plans, their sales activities (e.g., RFP, competition, demos, presentations). They want to share some information and withhold some information – you want to accept their translucency so that trust and velocity both increase.

Without a “Nominate to Close” process with your partners, you are playing a passive role in driving ecosystem revenue. You are hoping that partners are enabled enough to execute on each opportunity on your customer’s time. Such an approach decreases win rates, decreases deal sizes and increases the possibility of a dissatisfied customer.

Customers are focused on getting the “whole solution”. They want their buying experience to be seamless. They want to purchase your products from your resellers, purchase your technology partner’s products that complement your products, and leverage your services partner’s capabilities to implement and manage “whole solution” for their business needs. You need a place to record nominated opportunities and enable your partners to find complementary partners from your ecosystem that enables them to put together valuable “whole solutions” that drive value for the customer.

Without a “Co-Sell” process for your partners, you are playing a passive role in enabling ecosystem connections to happen in an ad-hoc manner. You are hoping that partners know which products can be assembled together to meet customer’s needs and which services will be needed to achieve value for the customer. Such an approach decreases win rates, decreases deal sizes and increases the possibility of a dissatisfied customer.

Partners want to review their sales performance with you. You have to normalize sales performance across your ecosystem – so that the best performers know what they are doing is working and can continue to execute; the poor performers know what they are doing is not working and can start doing activities that are working for others in the ecosystem.

Without collaborative Performance Review, your partners experience sales with you as a “black box”. They are not sure if their pipeline and their wins are working for their partnership or not. Manually collecting information for QBRs is time-consuming, inefficient, and error-prone. You are not growing the deal size or driving more value at customer accounts engaged by your partners in your ecosystem. As a result, your ecosystem underperforms.

You offer funds to your partners, and you receive funds from your partners. You have to plan the utilization of these funds so that they help you and your partner achieve your shared goals. You need a place to plan your funds together with your partners, such that you coordinate with your ecosystem intentionally – ensuring that the right goals are being set and the right activities are happening in driving revenue and driving solutions across all field teams – across regions, industries and LOBs.

Without Collaborative Funds Planning, you risk having your partners mis-aligned on your shared goals. You risk mis-aligned spending, where partners are funding activities and generating outcomes that have lower win rates or lower profitability. You risk not having an intentional execution plan to achieve your shared goals with your ecosystem.

Partners want to utilize shared funds to execute with you around your portfolio of products and services. You have to enable their field teams to propose activities that you can fund to drive shared outcomes. You have to enable your field teams – across regions, industries and LOBs – to connect with their field teams and leverage these funded activities to achieve your goals. You have to track performance for each activity so that you can do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

Without collaborative Propose to Done, your partners field team perceive of your fund process as a “black-box”. They are not sure how much funds are available, how much performance goals are expected from them, and how to adapt their ideas based on what you know works. You don’t know their performance – they do not know the reasons you accept or reject their proposals. There is no mechanism to connect funded activities with Marketing or CRM systems that tracks outcomes for these activities automatically.

Partners want to get reimbursed on their spend on activities that were approved for funding. You have to enable their field teams to submit claims and receive timely reimbursements. You have to inspect their proof of spend, proof of execution and proof of performance so that you can reimburse compliant spending.

Without collaborative Claim to Reimbursement, your partners field team perceive of your claims process as a “black-box”. They are not sure how much claims are pending, which claims were declined and for what reason. You don’t know their spending – they do not know the reasons you accept or reject their proposals. There is no mechanism to connect their proof points that tracks outcomes for these activities automatically.

You want to review your fund performance with your partners. You have to normalize funds performance across your ecosystem – so that the best performers know what they are doing is working and can continue to execute; the poor performers know what they are doing is not working and can start doing activities that are working for others in the ecosystem.

Without collaborative Performance Review, your partners experience funds from you as a “black box”. They are not sure if their activities are working for their partnership or not. You are checking for compliance after the execution is done, you are receiving performance feedback that is missing in the best case and incorrect in the worst case. As a result, your funds under-perform and thus your ecosystem under-performs.

Partners want to build sales, marketing, enablement, solution, funds & incentives plans around your portfolio of products and services. Your company needs to do the same around your partners’ portfolio of products and services. You need a place to plan your execution together with your partners, such that you coordinate with your ecosystem intentionally – ensuring that your partners are activating across your target market.

Without Collaborative Partner Planning, you risk having your partners over-invest in “hot” areas and under-invest in many market segments. You risk misaligned partnering, where market reach and coverage is spotty, leaving segments open for your competition. You risk not having an intentional execution plan to achieve your shared revenue goals with your ecosystem.

You offer incentives to your partners, and you receive incentives from your partners. You have to plan the achievement of these incentives so that they help you and your partner achieve your shared goals and hit their incentives. You need a place to plan your incentives together with your partners, such that you coordinate with your ecosystem intentionally – ensuring that the right goals are being set and the right activities are happening in driving revenue, marketing, enabling and building offerings across all field teams – across regions, industries and LOBs.

Without Collaborative Management of Incentives, you risk having your partners misaligned on your shared incentives. You risk misaligned activities, where partners are gaming incentives and doing activities that you know have lower win rates or lower profitability. You risk not having an intentional execution plan that hits incentives but results in an under-performing ecosystem.

You want to review your ecosystem performance with your partners. You have to normalize performance across your ecosystem – so that the best performers know what they are doing is working and can continue to execute; the poor performers know what they are doing is not working and can start doing activities that are working for others in the ecosystem.

Without collaborative Performance Review, your partners experience programs from you as a “black box”. They are not sure if their execution is working for their partnership or not. You are checking for outcomes after the execution is done, you are receiving performance feedback that is missing in the best case and incorrect in the worst case. As a result, your programs under-perform and thus your ecosystem under-performs.

Customers are focused on getting the “whole solution”. They want their buying experience to be seamless. They want to purchase your products from your resellers, purchase your technology partner’s products that complement your products, and leverage your services partner’s capabilities to implement and manage “whole solution” for their business needs. You need a place to record nominated opportunities and enable your partners to find complementary partners from your ecosystem that enables them to put together valuable “whole solutions” that drive value for the customer.

Without a “Partner-to-Partner” program for your partners, you are playing a passive role in enabling ecosystem connections to happen in an ad-hoc manner. You are hoping that partners know which products can be assembled together to meet customer’s needs and which services will be needed to achieve value for the customer. Such an approach decreases win rates, decreases deal sizes and increases the possibility of a dissatisfied customer.

Your partners want a multi-dimensional relationship with you. They are interested in driving revenue through joint sales execution; in driving awareness and demand through joint marketing execution; in driving “whole solutions for customer needs” through joint solutions execution; in aligning business outcomes via incentives and funds; in doing periodic reviews to keep execution aligned. You need a place to plan and execute across multiple dimensions together with your partners, such that you coordinate your ecosystem intentionally – ensuring that your partners are activating across your target market.

Without Collaborative 360-degree Partnering, you risk having your partners over-invest in “hot” areas and under-invest in many market segments. You risk misaligned partnering, where sales-marketing-solutions-incentives-funds are mis-aligned, leaving segments under-performing for your competition to pick up market share. You risk having an under-performing ecosystem.