Case Study: Relayware Optimizes Nutanix's Channel Partner Experience

The Company

Relayware
Twitter: @relayware
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/relayware

Relayware offers software and services that enable organizations to maximize and measure channel effectiveness and automate partner programs to reduce overhead, gain control and increase revenues. 

The Client

Nutanix is focused on delivering IT-as-a-service, delivering invisible infrastructure for next-generation enterprise computing by natively converging compute, storage and virtualization into a turnkey hyper-converged solution.

The Challenge

Based on Nutanix’s success and the industry’s growth, numerous sources have reported that Nutanix is one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley.

Nutanix knows that partners are the key to success and with almost all of its sales fulfilled through the channel, Nutanix is deeply committed to its partners. Channel partners provide the best experience for customers in this industry, and partners have been essential to Nutanix’s growth strategy.

Nutanix’s partners have strong skills in virtualization, VDI brokering technologies, ERP systems and other technical areas. The company’s partner community brings together the right mix of skills to profitably deliver what customers need. Nutanix is committed to providing its partners with the tool they need to achieve success.{ad}

As channel partners are paramount to Nutanix’s growth and success, the company wants to enable each and every channel partner organization as well as all of the many individuals that work for those organizations.

Nutanix has thousands of global partners of all sizes. Some partners have hundreds of employees selling Nutanix and others are much smaller. And Nutanix wanted a solution that works for every channel partner organization regardless of size and structure.

“We can only be successful if our partners are successful,” said Joan Morales, senior channel marketing manager for Nutanix. “We are investing a lot in …

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… enabling our partners. All of our training, enablement, sales tools, etc. across all geographies are available via the partner portal, which is why it is so important.

“We must enable the growth of our partners today as well as pave the way for our future. We want to give our partners a very personalized experience, and with many solutions, that type of customization would require a huge investment,” said Morales.

Because of Nutanix’s global presence, it was important that the channel management solution could accommodate multiple languages.

“Deal registration goes through the partner portal,” said Morales. “Marketing development funds. Everything goes through the partner portal. So it was also critical that we had a solution that was easy for the everyday business person to work with, and that everything didn’t have to go through IT. It’s a waste of time and resources if we have to rely on the IT department for every single change needed. Our channel account managers should be self-sufficient.

“Our goal is to make the interaction with our existing partners more valuable, more engaged, more personalized.”

The Solution

“We looked at eight solutions for managing our channel partner program, and after weighing the pros and cons, we knew that Relayware could deliver the channel partner experience we needed and could also meet our scalability requirements,” Morales said.

“It was important that we aren’t punished for growth, and many solutions’ pricing models punish their customers when they grow, but that’s not the case with Relayware.

“With Relayware we don’t have to open a ticket with our IT department every time we want to make a change, such as simply uploading new content.

“Our partners go through our partner portal to get to our selling academy, watch high-quality videos, register deals and much more. We share everything through our partner portal, and now that we have a great partner portal, we are able to make available more and more tools to make our partners.

“We have partners across the entire world, and we had to have a partner portal that could scale from a language perspective. Before our portal was only available in English, and now our partner will support multiple languages. It’s great. We can do that ourselves and it doesn’t get more expensive,” said Morales. 

Relayware provided Nutanix with:

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At this time, Relayware connects to Nutanix’s Salesforce and Nutanix’s own SSO servers for authentication.

Relayware easily connects to a number of other solutions, so as Nutanix grows, the company can connect its partner management to other solutions, such as through-partner marketing, channel incentive management solutions or marketing automation solutions.

The Results

Typically partner portals see around an 8 percent activity rate as an industry average. Nutanix rolled out its partner portal in July 2015 and currently has a 50 percent activity rate, which demonstrates how the portal has become a true resource center for partners.  

Nutanix has more than quadrupled the number of partners who actively use their portal.

Do you have a success story you’d like to share? The Channel Partners Case Study Challenge is accepting submissions on a rolling basis. They will be published in a special section on the Channel Partners site, and the best ones will be awarded a Case Study Challenge Winner logo for use on their own websites. The best of the best will be invited to share their stories during a live session at a Channel Partners event. Case studies should be 1,200 words or less. You can download the form, send responses directly to Lorna Garey, editor-in-chief, or use our Web submission process. Let us hear from you!