The role of strategic partner marketing for a successful channel program has been gaining momentum in recent years. So how do you go from limited partner support to a robust partner program in less than one year? We asked CA Technologies. CA Technologies recognized the vital role partners have in driving sales and knew it was time to step up their partner enablement if they want to reach the top customers. Enter CA Technologies Global Partner Program

Most vendors understand the value of solution providers and know the value of a partner program; however, implementation can be tricky. To start CA Technologies listened to their partners, developed a program to address their issues, and then executed on their promise. By understanding the issues before proposing a solution, CA Technologies developed a partner program that we are excited to see unfold. CA Technologies had another crucial element of partner program success, which allowed it to develop a program in under a year from initial discussions: having your executive team behind the initiative.

We love to see programs that improve channel collaboration, so we caught up with Senior Vice President of Global Channel Sales David Bradley. Launched in April, Mr. Bradley discussed some of the highlights of the program.

CA Technologies Global Partner Program addresses a number of issues expressed by solution providers. An overarching focus of the program is that of a partner-preferred model, Bradley explains this is one that the program “supports partners on a tailored go-to-market and business plans approach.”

Program Highlights

The new volume-pricing program, out this July, will address a partners’ previous inability to earn partner discounts and volume discounts. To streamline partner engagement, partners will now use a single master agreement. Further integration with Salesforce.com, includes its realignment around a fixed number of established and new enterprise accounts enabling partners and CA Technologies to work together on named account as opposed to direct sales people hording the ideal prospects.

CA Technologies also announced the launch of their syndication and marketing automation tool, CA Technologies POP. Allowing partners to syndicate custom content to their website and launch co-branded campaigns that align with their Sales Plays, CA Technologies POP puts partners in the driver’s seat when it comes to launching fully integrated, professional marketing campaigns. Sticking with the more personalized engagement, these co-marketing resources and materials are now accessible in 11 languages for partners around the globe.

So what does success look like for CA Technologies?

Bradley would like a partner charter; grounding all partner go-to-market in customer success, developing a mutual view of success. CA Technologies would like to demonstrate to partners their ability to work with them in a highly collaborative model that respects the different contributions of each unique partner. Success will be measured through partner recruitment and eventually sales.

When working with clients on social media engagements, one of the questions we often get is: “What’s the ROI on this engagement?” This question is a challenging one to answer. While we are certain that vendors and solution providers alike are going to get more interaction with partners and prospective clients by investing in a social media engagement, it is often hard to put a dollar amount on what one interaction is worth.

Because of the issue with quantifying interactions, I’ve found it  more helpful to think about Return on Engagement (ROE) instead of Return on Investment (ROI). Are you engaging the right people? If so, measure this by how your engagement has improved. This is more effective than putting an actual dollar amount on each activity. Here’s why:

• How can you measure ROI on current activities?  Today more than ever, it takes more than just one interaction to get a real lead. You may tweet something and then someone follows you, goes to your website, downloads an eBook giving you their email. You then email them your newsletter for two months before they pick up the phone and call you. So which of these activities do you tie the lead to? The original tweet? The eBook? The newsletters?
• ROI doesn’t help you build your network. You have an immediate circle of prospects or customers, people you could pick up the phone and call today who would be happy to take your call. Then you have a group of people in your immediate network; they’re connected to you on LinkedIn or Twitter. They’re in your call list, they’re connected to your colleagues. What if we told you that they are only 3% of your prospective network and over 70% of the people on your list today are NOT viable prospects? The first thing you need to do is strengthen the list of people you’re communicating with on a regular basis and improve your engagement with them. Social media allows you to do that better than any other resource. You just need to be in the right place at the right time.
• ROI is a false metric. If you only measure activities with dollars behind them, you’ll be selling yourself short. The things you’re doing with social media today are going to help you build your pipe in six, twelve, eighteen months. Should you discount those just because they aren’t in your funnel today? Probably not.

Brian Solis also has an interesting view on ROI vs. ROE as well. What do you think? Is it worth changing the way you think about ROI and getting a ton more business?

It’s that time of year again! No not tax season. It’s time to get outside (okay you can bring your iPad) and celebrate Earth Day! Every April we see a little logo flash in the bottom of TV channels and websites about how such-and-such company is ‘being green’ and how you should be too. Unfortunately, for the vendors and channel partners who are actually doing a good job with their environmental sustainability record, this is a time when all your hard work can be ignored thanks to the onslaught of greenwashing.

At Channel Maven Consulting we fancy ourselves green.  We have recycling and composting in our office building, turn off all of our power strips at night, and many of our team members bike or walk to the office on a regular basis. With our office, though, there is only so much we can do. To help cut through this year’s Earth Day greenwashing, we’d like to discuss two real sustainability movements in the channel: moving to the (green) cloud and supply-side sustainability.
Green Cloud

The cloud is booming in 2012 and many think it is a greener option for companies, so what does the green cloud offer? First, the cloud allows for lower on-site power consumption and less material hardware and packaging. While the onsite data center/server environment does exist somewhere, the added burden of having a highly available power supplies, with backup diesel generators, at every location requires a lot of energy to both produce these items as well as power and maintain them. In addition, all of the hardware (servers, storage devises, networking equipment, etc) requires packaging and shipping to get to the individual locations. Second, the support services for the cloud environment are all in one location. With growing markets in China and India, many companies deploy their own IT teams to on site server implementation, which means a lot of travel (and wasted fuel). Finally, it’s important to know the energy management and sustainability policy of your cloud provider. Many cloud providers are using innovative cooling and energy management practices, which not only keep your data secure but also reduce overall energy consumption for a green and safe cloud solution.

EMC Corp is a prime example of jumping onto the green cloud. After realizing how much energy their five data centers were using, EMC began the move to virtualized IT infrastructure in 2004 and will complete the move this year. EMC’s cloud move reduced energy consumption by 34%. EMC isn’t stopping with the cloud, they offer flexible working, to reduce community costs, and are designing new buildings with energy efficiency in mind.

Supply Chain Sustainability

In the globalized channel, more and more focus is placed on supply-side sustainability. One way to integrate sustainability into your supply chain is to know what elements you should be on the lookout for in your manufacturing facilities. Keep note of rare elements like Neodyminum, primarily mined in China, which is used in laser, microphones, headphones, and hard disks. Industry initiatives from the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) have focused on responsible sourcing to promote a more sustainable supply chain. At Channel Maven Consulting, we are happy to see so many of the vendors we work with have joined EICC and are committed to improve the social and environmental sustainability of the global electronics supply chain.

CA Technology has jumped to a leadership position in IT sustainability, focusing not only on greening in house, but forcing sustainability up their supply chain. In house CA provides flexible work for employees, which saves on commuting costs, builds green with LEED certified buildings, and for Earth Day 2012 we stumbled across CA employees taking time out of their day to volunteer with Coonemara Meadow Land Preserve in Texas. On the supply-side, CA promotes its sustainability mission upstream, by demanding that its suppliers maintain sustainability standards with a monthly screening.

Hewlett-Packard is another great example of expanding an environmental policy beyond its own brick and mortar (although its brick and mortar are often LEED certified). HP extends its strict environmental, health, and safety management system to every company it acquires. HP makes a practice of setting annual environmental goals AND achieving them! This is a best practice we hope to see implemented in every IT company.

Of course, no blog post on green IT can be complete without mentioning the frontrunner IBM. With an environmental policy that spans over 40 years, IBM has an institutional memory that is deeply embedded in environmental sustainability. IBM’s practice of implementing proactive environmental policy BEFORE regulation and still pull a profit is a testament to companies being able to do well by doing good. Keep up the great work IBM!

We are happy to see so many industry leaders stepping up their green initiatives and can’t wait to see even more improvements by Earth Day 2013!

Almost five years ago when I joined Twitter, I found it to be a pretty useful communication tool even in B2B. I remember trying to find someone at a specific prospect, tweeting out to my followers and ending up on the phone with the exact right person within 24 hours. Since then we actually became friends and keep in touch. Ahh the good old days, remember that, @mjayleibs?

Fast forward to 2012 when if you have pinned it on Pinterest, shared it on Facebook, posted it on LinkedIn AND tweeted it on Twitter you’re never sure if anyone is going to see that valuable content you want your audience to see. We’re all so overwhelmed by being overly available (I now have to take my MacBook Pro, iPhone and iPad with me everywhere…you’re welcome Jobs’ kids) that we’ve forgotten how to be an audience.

How do we just listen to what’s important?

Enter sites like Paper.li and CRN Buzz.

Paper.li is a content curation service. It enables people to publish newspapers based on topics they like and treat their readers to fresh news, daily. Topics can be pretty much anything and it’s a cool way to get information (that you didn’t have to create) into the hands of your audience.

CRN Buzz is an online destination that identifies and presents the most popular and relevant stories that the most active experts and influencers are discussing on Twitter. (Yes I copied that off their website). Basically if you, 1)amplify content about one of their high tech categories and 2) get your followers up and 3) your RT’s increase and 4) people actually care about what you’re talking about, the more likely you are to find content you’re sharing and creating on CRN Buzz.

LinkedIn Today takes all the great content that’s been shared on news outlets and puts them by topic in your appropriate view. If I’m in high tech I get mostly business and high tech stories though people in the medical field or finance get something different.

It all comes back to putting the right content in the right people’s hands at the right time. To do that, you first need to find that content then share it appropriately like we talk about in our post on social media amplification.

So what else are folks seeing out there?  What’s stopping you from becoming a influencer on CRN Buzz or Top Story on LinkedIn Today?