At Microsoft, partner satisfaction drives much of the

Transcription

1 SALES & MARKETING INSIGHTS How Microsoft Leverages Channel Analytics and Insights to Navigate Today s Changing Partner Business Models by John DeSarbo and Erik Long, ZS Associates At Microsoft, partner satisfaction drives much of the technology giant s success. With the largest partner ecosystem in the industry, Microsoft grounds its commitment to partner satisfaction in its business strategies to improve customer centricity and responsiveness. But emerging partner business models can challenge even an award-winning global partner program, as cloud computing, Big Data, social integration and mobility are rapidly transforming the IT channel. Knowing what channel partners feel about their experiences with a vendor and taking action to improve those experiences can lead to greater partner loyalty, more effective new partner acquisitions, higher ROI and greater efficiency. Microsoft recognized early on that its partner program would have to expand and improve how it gathers feedback from an

2 About the Authors John DeSarbo, Principal ZS Associates, San Francisco. John leads the ZS Sales Channel Strategy & Management Practice, and has more than two decades of consulting and industry experience focused on sales and marketing strategy and operations. His areas of expertise include multichannel go-to-market strategy, channel analytics, alliance and partner programs, and sales force design. John works with clients across a variety of B2B industry sectors with a particular focus on the technology industry. increasingly diverse partner ecosystem, react faster to feedback and address the needs of its quickly growing cloud partner community. To accomplish those goals, the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), through its voice of partner (VoP) program, started looking deeper at feedback provided by partners through support interactions, survey responses and other means to reveal trends and common themes in order to help improve the partner experience. Knowing what s valuable For high-tech companies, measuring overall satisfaction is important, but so is drilling down and finding what products and offerings are the most and least useful to partners. How and from whom you ask for feedback is also key. There is a clear delineation in what vendors instead ask different types of partners in VoP programs, according to a recent ZS Associates study of vendor partners. Erik Long, Principal ZS Associates, Chicago Erik s expertise includes the application of customer insights and analytics to a range of marketing issues including market segmentation and targeting plans; value proposition and brand positioning; and voice of customer programs and customer experience. He has helped clients across various B2B and B2C industries, including high tech, consumer packaged goods, retail, financial services, health care, and travel and hospitality. While vendors query traditional VARs, MSPs and ISPs on operational, support and training matters, the ZS survey shows that vendors instead ask cloud VARs for feedback on financial topics such as incentives, marketing funds and pricing. Vendors know cloud VARs have different needs, and are trying to determine how to support these business models. But it s not clear vendors are asking cloud VARs the right questions. For instance, some vendors ask tactical questions about the partner program: Are we offering attractive incentives, providing the right content and making it easy to use MDF or co-op? But cloud VARs want to engage more strategically with vendors than this question infers. They want to know the portfolio strategy and how they can grow their businesses. It is a different conversation altogether. How you gather feedback is often as important as the feedback itself High-tech vendors should employ a wide array of listening mechanisms that involve asking, observing and engaging with partners to garner feedback. Surveys, in-person events such as advisory councils, online portals and social media provide a wide range of options for partners to 2 ZS Associates

3 give both formal, structured feedback and offer unstructured information. The ZS study found that based on their business model and revenue, channel partners have far different ideas about what constitutes the best programs. When choosing between general surveys, advisory groups or roundtables, and quarterly business reviews, cloud VARs prefer to discuss financial topics in quarterly business reviews, while other types of partners generally prefer surveys. Smaller partners prefer surveys to any other feedback collection vehicle. Larger partners prefer quarterly business reviews for collecting feedback on almost every topic and issue. From these findings, we think vendors must respond to evolving partner ecosystems with customized VoP programs. Feedback the Microsoft way Microsoft uses several methods to acquire VoP feedback. A key piece is its semiannual Global Relationship Survey (GRS), offered across multiple customer and partner segments, ranging from large enterprise businesses to individual consumers. This survey tells Microsoft how we are doing, and often guides strategy for the upcoming year, says Marie Mihail, Microsoft worldwide lead for unmanaged customer and partner experience (CPE). These survey insights will also help Microsoft reshape future survey questions to gain better customer and partner insight on needs and drivers. Other types of feedback come from a more operational perspective, says Billy Lee, MPN business program manager. Microsoft reviews support call volumes, social media and other incoming data points, such as direct feedback from its global partners. Whether we make a change that streamlines a process or [make] a more subtle change that helps remove friction, we drive to improve the partner experience, says Camille Mazo, Microsoft director of MPN business excellence. 3 ZS Associates

4 The insights partner feedback actually delivers Analytics on both structured data (easily quantified from survey answers), and unstructured data, which must be gathered and interpreted from various listening sources, can reveal insights on partner sentiments. Insights generated from customer data help companies understand the current situation, internal processes and hypotheses on partner satisfaction drivers. At Microsoft, for example, the GRS revealed partner feedback over the pace of change and requests for more clarity around how those program changes would help partners become more profitable and relevant. To that end, the MPN team developed a comprehensive disclosure process to help partners absorb program changes through early notifications, delivering better partner experiences. Microsoft was voted No. 1 Best Company to Partner With in 2012 by CRN. The Microsoft Partner Network has been a five-star winner in the CRN Partner Program Guide for eight years running. In 2014 and beyond, Mihail says Microsoft s feedback processes will evolve with the changing vendor-partner ecosystem. The frequency of surveys, questions and mechanics will be similar, but how broadly and how often we take the input will change, she says. The company will continue to improve how it captures partner feedback and turns that input into insights that help the partner community. We are continually evaluating how we listen to our partners, Mihail says. You have to have the ability to take pulses and marry them with what we see as a broad and statistically balanced voice of partner program. 4 ZS Associates

5 Close the loop For Microsoft, the final part of gathering feedback and driving change is closing the loop with its partners communicating the changes made back to the partner community as a result of its feedback. We need to be able to demonstrate that we ve heard their feedback and are taking action against it, Mazo says. We can drive changes based on the feedback received, but it s also important to explain why we are making changes, crediting our partners who raised the issue via a support call or message received on Twitter account. To provide this additional agility and further enhance the feedback it received, MPN launched the MPN Ambassador initiative. The MPN Ambassador posts on a monthly partner community blog examples of changes based on partner feedback. The goal is to share some of the thought processes on triaging, researching and resolving these issues and continue the dialogue around MPN with our partners, Lee says. About ZS Associates ZS Associates is a global leader in sales and marketing consulting, outsourcing, technology and software. For more than 30 years, ZS has helped companies across a range of industries get the most out of their sales and marketing organizations. From 21 offices around the world, ZS experts use analytics and deep expertise to help companies make smart decisions quickly and cost-effectively. ZS comprises multiple affiliated legal entities. Learn more at ZS Associates inquiry@zsassociates.com ZS Associates, Inc All Rights Reserved All trademarks within this document are either the property of ZS Associates or their licensors. 5 ZS Associates