Workday, Pushing Growth with Partners, Hires Verizon Alumna Sarah Marsh

Enterprise cloud applications provider Workday is bringing on Sarah Marsh to help grow and strengthen its base of North American partners.

Marsh, who recently ended a successful 16-year tenure at Verizon, on Tuesday announced her new position as director of channel partnerships at the Pleasanton, California-based software company.

Marsh in her new role will manage existing partnerships and focus scaling Workday’s North American partner ecosystem. She called Workday an innovative company that emphasizes an inclusive work culture. She also pointed to the efforts Workday is making around its partners.

“Workday is committed to the channel, innovating the future of partnerships, and investing in the partner ecosystem, so it’s an exciting time to be joining the business,” Marsh told Channel Futures.

Sarah Marsh

Marsh last month announced she was leaving Verizon. She had been working as director of channel strategy and sales enablement for the carrier.

She played a key role in launching Verizon’s two-tier agent channel (involving both customer-facing technology advisors and their services distributor partners). That program also broke down dividing lines between wireless and wireline. Furthermore, Marsh drove efforts around Verizon’s value-added resellers, including promoting co-selling opportunities between the partners and Verizon direct sellers.

“It’s exciting to see the investments and the commitment to channel increase over the last several years,” she told Channel Futures in August. “Channel is here to stay at Verizon, and I’m proud that I was able to be a part of that.”

Workday and Partners

Workday in April appointed Sam Alkharrat as its chief partner officer.

Workday’s Sam Alkharrat

Alkharrat previously was president and chief revenue officer for C3 AI. He also brings experience from tenures at VMware, SAP and Cisco. He stated his intention of helping Workday increasing its global channel footprint. In addition, he said Workday intends to build more packaged solutions with its partners and help them enter new markets like the federal sector. It would also identify key software and services partners with which to drive more business.

“Workday has always had a partner ecosystem centered around meeting the customer where they are. But as I think about the next evolution of our strategy, I see an incredible opportunity to continue opening up our partner ecosystem, and doubling down on this effort will accelerate our ability to co-innovate with our services, software, venture, and channel partners,” Alkharrat wrote in a blog.