One of the most critical relationships in our industry is that between vendors and IT channel partners. Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of that relationship than the channel partner program, a staple of nearly every vendor’s partnering strategy that is tweaked, overhauled, lauded or decried each and every year – not to mention invested in by the millions.
At CompTIA, we’re taking a deeper look at the current state of channel partner programs. We recently conducted a market research study completed by more than 400 IT solution providers, VARs, managed services providers and other channel players. The survey, which we fielded in December, tracks trends in program participation, member satisfaction levels and overall effectiveness from the perspective of the channel. The study also measures the perceived impact that macro industry shifts – such as the move to cloud computing – will have on the structure and meaning of tomorrow’s channel partner programs.
While the final research report is not due publicly until March, we thought we’d share a few nuggets from our findings thus far.
First off, the study reveals that participation in channel partner programs is high, both in the number of vendors being engaged with formally and the intensity of that participation.
Consider the following:
- Nearly six in 10 IT solution providers belong to between five and 14 vendor channel partner programs, indicative of channel organizations’ tendency to maintain either a relatively wide and/or deep portfolio of products and services.
- One-third currently participates in 10 or more vendor channel partner programs.
- More than half reported high participation (defined as strategic to their business) in their vendor partner programs, while just eight percent characterized their engagement in partner programs as low/occasional participation.
While participation levels in partner programs are encouraging, the survey found they are also quite fluid; in other words, the vendors that solution providers choose to partner with today are not necessarily those they will do business with tomorrow.
Case in point: In the last two years, half of channel respondents reported joining between one to four new vendor partner programs, while close to 30 percent joined between five to nine new programs. Sounds good, but on closer inspection those “adds” look to come at a price for participation in existing programs. Over that same period of time, 40 percent of channel organizations said they dropped participation in at least one to four existing vendor partner programs, while 21 percent dropped out of five to nine of their existing mix.
A number of factors could explain this churn, from changing market dynamics to the rising or falling relevance of individual vendors and their technologies. But it’s clear from our study that partnerships cannot be taken for granted. Solution providers’ decision to participate in vendor programs is assessed continually – 60 percent of channel respondents said they evaluate their vendor partnerships either bi-annually or quarterly.
Business relies on the quality of connections. Strong ones help breed success, weak ones detract from it – and they change constantly. Over the next few weeks, we’ll provide additional details from the research study on partner program trends, including how the channel rates various program elements, resources and requirements. The insights can provide forward-looking guidance into best practices to cement the vendor-partner relationship in the year ahead.
