Alliance Aces

Where can you take your startup from 18 employees to over 150 in just three years? (Not to mention nine offices in seven countries.) The startup nation: Israel, of course. On today’s episode of Alliance Aces, I’m joined by Shirley Ashkenazi, Director of Strategic Alliances and Business Development at Kryon, an innovative RPA (robotic process automation) company. We talked about how strategic alliances are everything to startups. “Very quickly we understood that in order to grow, we had to have a very strong alliance team from a skill perspective and from management commitment,” Shirley explained.

No one goes to market alone. It takes partners to deliver results.  Finding the right partner can be a challenge. However, when this is intentionally built into your business model it allows your company to work collaboratively and make the most of your resources. Jan Twombly is the President of the Rhythm of Business. She works in partnering with organizations as a strategic alliance consultant, educator, and researcher. Her work with tech companies primarily involves the facilitation of creating smart partnering alliances on their behalf. ROB has been enhancing their newest program called, partner readiness. In order to be considered ready, partnering has to be embedded in every aspect of the business from strategy, operations, mindset, and execution.  

Citrix isn’t your grandpa's Citrix anymore. They’ve made a lot of transitions over the past several years and have made a major pivot toward employee engagement.  What they’re delivering today is all partner based solutions. Obviously, that means alliances are key to enabling the success of these pivots and strategic efforts.  On this episode of the Alliance Aces podcast, we had the chance to talk with Steve Blacklock, Vice President, Global Strategic Alliances at Citrix. He talked us through issues like, how alliances are helping to drive success for Citrix today, what metrics Steve and his team are focused on, and how they vet potential alliances.

Successful relationships are founded on give and take. You may be thinking that partnering with a non-profit organization is all give and no take.  Think again. GitLab’s Director of Technical Evangelist, Priyanka Sharma, fills us in on the benefits of partnering with a nonprofit in your industry. In this episode, we also cover open-source ecosystems, measuring alliance success, telling a meaningful story, and more.

In this episode of the Alliance Aces podcast we look at the exciting career of an industry icon, Mike Thomas.  Mike is the GM of Ecosystem Practice at ActiveWorld, a company that has transformed the ecosystem and alliance processes for tech companies. On this exciting episode we hear from an industry veteran who has worked with companies such as IBM, MIcrosoft, Cisco, and many other tech giants.  As he’s helped titans of tech create fulfilling partnerships, he’s also created a fulfilling vision with his company that will continue to create lasting change in the industry for years to come.

Are your strategic alliances turning stale? Oftentimes, we end up putting in more work to obtain strategic partnerships than we do to maintain them. It can be difficult to find the value we saw in them at first. Luckily, Airship’s Senior Director of Global Alliances, Forest Yule, recently discussed some key methods to cultivating more value from your partnerships. Listen here.

The IoT world expands exponentially almost daily. Companies are rapidly innovating and combining their technologies together to deliver on increasing customer expectations. So, how can IoT companies optimize their entire ecosystem to deliver joint solutions? We asked Bill Johnson this very question at IoT World 2019 on our #AllianceAces podcast. Bill is the Marketing Director at Teledyne LeCroy, and we asked him about how their partnering with amazing companies (like BMW!) to deliver powerful IoT solutions.

Alliance opportunities abound. Finding them can be tricky.  On this episode of the #AllianceAces podcast, Gary Bernier joined us to share several ways to find and succeed with alliance opportunities. In this episode, we discuss: Where to find alliance opportunities The necessary ingredients for alliance success How to use coopetition to your advantage

If you’re fortunate enough to be with a company that values alliances, the next task is to expand your ecosystem. It can be challenging to find the right partners, onboard them, and ensure the quality of the product and support is maintained across the delivery chain. Andrew Lezon met that challenge (and succeeded). He’s the Senior Director of Channel Sales & Partner Programs at LivePerson. He came on our #AllianceAces podcast to share how he scaled his ecosystem from 40 to 200 partners.

Why should you trust WorkSpan with your partnerships and alliances? That’s a great question. We don’t have 1 reason for you. We have 5. For this episode of the #AllianceAces podcast, Chip and Guarav did a special Facebook Live interview from SAPPHIRE in Orlando, Florida. They talked about transparency, the success of the entire ecosystem, how value differs from company to company, driving results, and sharing a single view of metrics. Gaurav Saini is VP of Network Success at WorkSpan. Chip Rogers is VP of Marketing and Alliances at WorkSpan, and host of the #AllianceAces podcast.

Any business wants to have good solid partnerships. Nobody gets successful all on their own, and establishing a good partner program is crucial to the success of any company, particularly in the software and technology field. But how do you go about building a partner program? How do you bring the right people along, provide the right levels of support, and structure your program in a way that’s beneficial for everyone involved? Matt Alvarez, Manager of Partner Alliances at SalesLoft, was recently a guest on the Alliance Aces podcast, and had some great ideas and examples that he and his team at SalesLoft have been focusing on as they build out their partner program.

If you’re wanting fast insights into the future of alliances, this is the #Alliance Aces episode for you. We interviewed Chris Webber, a true Alliance Ace. He’s the current Director of Strategic Alliances at IDC. PReviously, he worked with Cisco and Nortel to manage global business plans and alliances. On this episode, he discussing the emerging trends of alliances, including the growing necessity of trust due to cloud implementation, the need for differentiation even with ecosystems, and the power off generalization.

Global alliance management invites complexity. Multiple sales teams, cross-cultural concerns, value propositions, differing visions …. The list of challenges alliance managers and ecosystem manager can face is nearly endless. But there is a solution: Create a joint value proposition. On this episode of the #Alliance Aces podcast, we interviewed Aslam Jamal, Sr. Director for Strategic Alliances in the EMEA at ForgeRock. Aslam showed us 5 ways a joint value proposition increases the power of an alliance to deliver true joint solutions for end-users.

The modern era demands rapid development. But to create a timely solution that meets demands, companies need a network of long-standing partnerships they can rely on. So ... should an alliance manager invest in long-term relationships, or seize revenue opportunities and develop partnerships as needed? It’s a real question, and it deserves a thorough answer. We brought in Ard-Pieter de Man, Professor and Researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam, on the #AllianceAces podcast  — hosted by Chip Rodgers, VP Marketing and Alliances at WorkSpan. Here’s what Ard told us about the tradeoffs in long-term alliance management and opportunistic alliance management:

The number of alliances needed for a solution has grown: Joint solutions that have traditionally required 1 partner, now may require 4 or 5. Managing an ecosystem that has all the available partnerships for each solution, can be quite a challenge. On this episode, Helen Morin joins our host, Chip Rodgers, to share 5 quick tactics you can use right now to manage your expanding alliance network. Helen Morin is the VP of Global Alliances & Channels at SAS, where she’s worked for 17 years in alliance management roles, as well as technical and consulting positions. Prior to SAS, she worked at the Canadian Department of National Defense, and she also holds the coveted CSAP credential (Certified Strategic Alliance Professional).

Jay McBain, a Principal Analyst for Channels, Partnerships & Alliances at Forrester, gave an incredible keynote at the ASAP Global Alliance Summit about the coming wave of new alliances. In short, traditional partnerships have evolved, because buyers have changed. This new wave of B2B buyers isn’t struggling with their superiors to deal with red tape and a slow approach. They’re going right around the CTO and straight to the sellers … after they’ve done all the research. Our Alliance Aces host, Chip Rodgers, caught up with Jay after his talk at ASAP, and got a deeper look at these new buyers, and how that impacts the future of alliances. Jay gave us 3 reasons buyers and buying behavior are rapidly evolving, then he shared the opportunity for alliances. Taken from a Facebook Live interview.

Mike Nevin understands the principles of success in alliances better than probably anyone. Back in the late 90s, he and a few colleagues went all-in on alliances. They predicted that considering the continued waves of technological innovation, alliances were the future. Like we said … he went all-in on alliances: He became Founding President of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) in Europe. He’s also the CEO & Founder of his own alliance consulting firm, and he’s the Managing Director of Alliance Best Practice, where he continually analyzes the best practices of the world's strongest alliances, and develops models we can all follow. We interviewed him live on Facebook for Alliance Aces, and you can catch the entire interview right here.

Your success isn’t only predicated on your ability to sell or commercialize your offerings. Your success is dependent on the success of your alliance, especially in any industry with tech at its core (read: every industry). We caught up with Marc Geall at SAP InnovationX in London. He's SVP of Global Platform & Technology Ecosystems at SAP. He came on the Alliance Aces podcast and told us this: There’s no success without partner success. You can catch the entire video interview here, or listen in for one stellar podcast.

Every alliance professional has had some form of this happen: Your boss asks for influenced revenue within a specific alliance or joint solution. The truth is: You don’t have an answer. The information is simply unavailable, because it’s buried in outdated spreadsheets, and hidden across you and your alliance’s businesses. Sound familiar? It’s not just you — every alliance professional has faced that situation. Matt Gale and Jason Boggs came on the Alliance Aces Podcast to share this and 2 other issues every alliance professional faces … and how they solved them. Matt Gale is the Director for Go to Market & Strategic Alliances, and Jason Boggs is the Senior Director for Cloud Ecosystem & Enablement. Both of them work at NTT DATA Services.

Validating and deploying a joint solution can often start to drag far past intended deadlines. The usual technical, marketing, and bureaucratic issues any deployment faces increase exponentially within alliances. But that doesn't have to be the case, says Joan Morales, Director of Partner & Technology Alliances at Nutanix. Consistently, his team has managed to validate joint solutions in a matter of weeks. How? He has an incredible methodology. On our Alliance Aces Podcast, Joan gave us his 4 keys to establishing a rapid joint-solution deployment model within every alliance.