There couldn’t be a better start to the New Year!
On January 13th, we had a blast hosting our Ecosystem Business Summit with the best from the industry - Cisco’s Jose Van Dijk and Wipro’s Jyoti Banda. With more than 600 ecosystem professionals registered and watching live and on-demand, we had an engaging event discussing the latest topics and trends in the partner ecosystem.
Here’s the Event Roundup!
We’ve curated the event’s panel highlights and poll responses. Read on to dive deeper into the topics that matter most to you!
The Era of Partner Ecosystems
As businesses plan their market expansion and present customers with better offerings, ecosystem partnering is now a strategic lever in the growth of all companies.
Customers' Control of Buying Motions
Buyer empowerment has unlocked tremendous value in partnering. Teaming up with ecosystem partners is key to meeting buyers’ needs and influencing buying decisions.
Partnering for a “Better Together” Future
Companies are seeking strategic partners to co-build joint offers and present them together in the various segments in the market so that a “Better Together” message can go deeply across the whole customer journey.
Official Co-sell Enabler for AWS & Microsoft
Co-sell partners of AWS and Microsoft can use WorkSpan to automate sending and receiving referrals and updates from their CRM to AWS ACE and Microsoft Partner Center and manage co-sell Sales Plans together.
Plans start at $990 / month.
Join the WorkSpan Network
You can join the WorkSpan network as a hub or as a node. As a hub, you can set up an ecosystem program for your partners to send/receive referrals from their CRM. You can do the same as a node working with your partners to co-sell.
"The key to scaling is to create something simple and repeatable for partnering motions to drive predictable outcomes."
- Mayank Bawa, CEO and Co-Founder at WorkSpan
Cisco’s Hardware to Software Evolution
Cisco’s transformative journey has been focused on driving more partner engagement to deliver value to customers by focusing on value-based customer lifecycle, customer satisfaction, and partner digital journey.
Partner Experience Transformation
Jose's team rolled out a single Partner Experience Platform (PXP) for improving end-to-end partner experience. They'd identified over 170 tools being used for partnering and, as of today, cut that number in half.
Partner Journey and Ecosystem Flywheel
Cisco looks at ecosystem partnerships as their ecosystem flywheel to revenue by co-selling, co-investing, co-innovating, and co-marketing with their partners.
Motivation to Join Hands with WorkSpan
Before WorkSpan, Cisco found it difficult to measure partner co-sell outcomes. The idea behind working on opportunities using WorkSpan is to be agile to bridge the gap and consolidate all partnership tools in one platform.
Cisco’s loop with P2P Channel Partners
Cisco is using AI to ensure which partners and solutions can win in which customer segments to reach the right audience. Using AI and WorkSpan, Cisco intends to work with those insights to provide value to both its partners and customers.
"It’s super important that we deliver an integrated experience to all of our partners that brings together the power of co-selling to the market."
- Jose’ Van Dijk, VP - Operations & Partner Performance, Global Partner Organization (GPO) at Cisco
Wipro’s Ecosystem Partnership Transformation
Over recent years, Wipro has simplified the organizational functions and pivoted towards a go-to-market and market-facing company to focus on ecosystem partnerships.
Key Initiatives at Wipro
Wipro is driving its partnership initiatives by becoming programmatic to co-create and run joint solutions with partners and build a gen-next organization to help customers adopt technology and deliver business outcomes faster (cloud, AI, 5G, etc.).
Trends in Partner Ecosystems
The four major engagement trends in ecosystem partnerships - Cloud Adoption (50% of customers adopt multi-cloud), Industry verticalization, customer experience enhancement using technology, and partner companies buying other companies.
The Need for Digitization of Partnerships
Digitization of partnerships (like with WorkSpan) is important because legacy systems can’t keep up with developments in partnerships - like co-selling, co-creating, co-investing, and tracking plans.
Have Questions?
If you have questions or want to chat with us, please reach out — we’d love to hear from you!
Thanks again for making EBS a success. We’ll see you at our next event!
Join fellow ecosystem professionals and join WorkSpan’s Community where we regularly share tips, news, and podcasts from across the partner ecosystem landscape.
Chip is passionate about building strong communities and ecosystems around enterprises to build excitement for the category, deliver value for customers, and grow the business. Prior to WorkSpan, Chip was with SAP for over 13 years, most recently growing the SAP Community Network to over 2 million engaged customers, partners, and developers. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago and an engineering degree from Northwestern.
