BeyondTrust Partners Getting New Specializations, Certifications, More in 2024
BeyondTrust is embracing a channel ecosystem approach.
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On Jan. 1, BeyondTrust is replacing all of its channel account managers with partner managers who will be custodians of their regional ecosystem, said Spee.
“No, we’re not letting everyone go and replacing them with new heads,” he said. “We’re changing everyone’s title and job description. The training for this new role started in 2023 and will continue into 2024. My own title is changing as well, from senior vice president of global channels and alliances, to senior vice president of global partner ecosystems.”
Next month, BeyondTrust will introduce industry specializations for partners, Spee said.
“This is something that partners and customers are asking for,” he said. “We have some partners that are making some organizational shifts that align to this as well that really support it. So that's something we're excited about rolling out. We're also rolling out more advanced certifications, particularly in the technical certification area. And a big shift for BeyondTrust, and a big emphasis and focus for me, is on the service delivery side. This is where the customer experience element comes into it and it's so important from a SaaS perspective. We're making enhancements to our program and adding some certification levels because we really want to greatly expand the number of certified BeyondTrust professionals in the marketplace, but also recognize they have different functions and different roles.”
BeyondTrust is on a mission to become a SaaS-led company, so customer experience is key, Spee said.
“The program and what we're trying to drive will make sure that we're driving a very positive customer experience, customer success for the adoption and growth of BeyondTrust within the accounts,” he said. “In terms of driving customer success and business outcomes, partners can't do it with BeyondTrust alone. It takes integration with all of the different products that are out there and that they're leveraging on their zero-trust journey. So we're building this ecosystem program that will support that, that brings all of our technology alliance partners into our go-to-market strategy and also connects our partners of different types. We're really driving an orchestrated partner ecosystem.”
Spee has made three predictions for 2024. Those are:
Partner success gains a seat at the customer success table.
SaaS business metrics replace channel metrics for measuring partner ROI.
Artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates the growth of partner ecosystems.
Customers rely on partners to provide the information and advice they need to make a buying decision, Spee said. They also rely heavily on partners for product implementation, integration and adoption.
“In 2024, we’ll see more partner success managers working alongside customer success managers,” he said. “Net promoter scores will expand to measure the customer’s view on both the vendor and the partners. As a result of this shift, what we need and I hope to start seeing is a greater inclusion of partner success in the customer success platforms.”
In 2024, companies will need to enhance their channel metrics with broader SaaS growth metrics to gain a more accurate view of channel impacts on the company, Spee said.
“Companies will need to look at the impact of their partner ecosystem on broader SaaS growth metrics, like customer lifetime value (CLTV), customer acquisition costs (CAC) and net recurring revenue (NRR),” he said.
Generative AI will start accelerating the growth of partner ecosystems in several ways in 2024, largely driven by partner technology vendors who are incorporating AI technology into their products and platforms, Spee said.
“What I'm seeing is partner technology vendors are now integrating AI into their platforms, and that's the quickest and easiest way for vendors like BeyondTrust to take advantage of it from a partnering perspective,” he said. “So the partnering tools that we use in our tech stack, as they start getting integrated with AI and offering AI features, that's where we get the value add because we can't go out there and spend time doing it ourselves, and logging into ChatGPT. We need it and we can't trust it either. There's the security risk. So we need tested, proven, valuable and secure ways to use AI in those platforms that we leverage.”
Looking ahead, the challenge for vendors will be shifting from a transactional resale channel strategy to an ecosystem strategy, Spee said.
“There are a lot of system improvements you have to make internally to manage this,” he said. “Some of the incentives that you run for partners, the way you track partner involvement, changes radically. So there are internal challenges. There’s also just the training and coaching of your teams. Changing the role of a channel manager to a partner manager, that's a big lift. We have to do massive education and enablement of our own partner management team, but also a lot of enablement and coaching of the sales team and getting them upskilled on how to engage. They might know how to engage a reseller or an SI on a standalone basis, but how do they work together with four different partners on the same opportunity and collaborate together? And they're starting to get it. We're really starting to have some early successes there.”
Not embracing an ecosystem strategy can impact a vendor’s growth and success, Spee said.
“If you look at how customers are buying today, they rely on all of these trusted advisors and we’re touching maybe 5% of that journey,” he said. “So we have to be very good at influencing the influencers. That's one reason why I'm so keen on making sure that our partners are successful, that we're enabling them and they have a really positive partnering experience with BeyondTrust so that when customers are out there asking them questions about cybersecurity, and identity and access management (IAM), the first thing that comes to their mind is I've got this great partner BeyondTrust.”
Not embracing an ecosystem strategy can impact a vendor’s growth and success, Spee said.
“If you look at how customers are buying today, they rely on all of these trusted advisors and we’re touching maybe 5% of that journey,” he said. “So we have to be very good at influencing the influencers. That's one reason why I'm so keen on making sure that our partners are successful, that we're enabling them and they have a really positive partnering experience with BeyondTrust so that when customers are out there asking them questions about cybersecurity, and identity and access management (IAM), the first thing that comes to their mind is I've got this great partner BeyondTrust.”
In 2024, BeyondTrust partners will see changes to the vendor’s partner program, including new industry specializations, certifications and more.
That’s according to Rob Spee, BeyondTrust’s senior vice president of global channels and alliances. The upcoming changes are part of the company’s ongoing effort to migrate its partner program to an ecosystem approach.
Switching to an ecosystem approach means “recognizing that you need a broad spectrum of partners and not just a spectrum of resellers,” he said.
BeyondTrust's Rob Spee
“Each region has a named ecosystem,” Spee said. “We know who our target reseller is, who our target GSI, our target technology alliance partners and service delivery partners are. So we are really intentional about saying, 'this is the select group of five to 10 partners in the ecosystem that we're working with.'
"What's really different though is we've had those different partner types for years; that's not new. But what's new is the orchestration of those partners and really intentionally getting them to work together. So before, it was kind of single-threaded. You might work with one or the other, but not trying to bring three, four or five together into an account doing different things, offering different elements of value along the buyer journey. So that's really the change. It's a very multi-threaded, but orchestrated approach.”
New for BeyondTrust Partners
BeyondTrust is expanding and improving its partner sales, pre-sales and post-sales implementation training and certification programs to improve its partner enablement experience, Spee said.
“BeyondTrust is in the process of building new ways to track and measure partner value," he said. “Once those are in place, we can migrate our partner program from a tiered program based on sales revenue to a program based on partner capabilities and value added to the customer experience. That will level the playing field for partners and drive more partner value for our customers.”
Learn more about BeyondTrust's evolving approach to the channel in the slideshow above.
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