MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF--(Marketwire - May 3, 2010) - Amazon Consulting, a leading channel services firm dedicated to helping companies elevate the impact of partnering, today unveiled a summary of its comprehensive annual State of Partnering Study. This research reveals detailed trends in vendor partnering challenges, priorities, and spending plans. The global study incorporates data from 55 hardware, software and services vendors, targeting executive-level individuals responsible for channel and alliance partner management. The survey included queries on training and enablement plans, partner segmentation and growth expectations, services delivery engagement models, and a deep-dive on channel spending plans and ROI.
"Now in its fourth year of being published, the 2010 State of Partnering Study has become a barometer for helping IT vendors understand their peers' plans, priorities and challenges around effectively managing multi-channel strategies," said Diane Krakora, Amazon Consulting CEO. "With this research, we provide a pulse on the top priorities and investment areas for the vendor community. It helps our clients benchmark their plans, sanity check their investments and understand what they're up against in winning and maintaining channel partners' mindshare. Based on this year's findings, we see vendors focusing on sales skill certification programs, refining their services business value proposition and crafting compelling pay-for-performance channel incentive programs."
Key takeaways from the State of Partnering 2010 include:
- Vendors are bullish on sales growth -- Traditional resellers still rank high as the leading strategic partner segment, however expect strong growth from emerging MSPs and infrastructure or hosting partners.
- Business planning activities will be a big focus this year to help understand evolving business models -- 62% will do selective recruitment in 2010 to fill vertical or geographic gaps. Cloud providers, SaaS developers have emerged.
- Vendors seek pre-sales skills and industry knowledge such as technical certifications as top partner competencies.
- Continued focus on services enablement programs & engagement models -- ½ of top enablement needs revolve around services capabilities such as professional services and technical support.
- Channel funding investments will be on people, pay-for-performance incentives and systems to track metrics and ROI.
Full results from this study are included in a comprehensive research report, which is available to subscribers of Amazon Consulting's PartnerG2 market intelligence service. A free Executive Summary of research findings can be found at Amazon Consulting's Online Resource Center.
PartnerG2
Amazon Consulting offers market research studies through a comprehensive annual market intelligence subscription program called PartnerG2. Fueling channel management professionals with valuable research, analysis, thought leadership tools and expert advice to guide partnering success, PartnerG2 offers unlimited users under a corporate subscription, quarterly studies based on industry hot topics, a complete library of thought leadership materials and 4-hours of complementary consulting services. Channel industry analyst and speaker Beth Vanni is the Director of Market Intelligence for Amazon's Partner G2 program and can be followed at http://amazonconsultingblog.wordpress.com/ or http://twitter.com/bvanni.
About Amazon Consulting
Amazon Consulting, LLC is a partnering development firm based in Silicon Valley, California, wholly dedicated to helping companies elevate the impact of partnering. We achieve this by effectively designing, implementing and automating channel and alliance models. We offer services ranging from channel models and program development plans to partnering operations and program execution. PartnerPath® provides our clients a best-in-class partner portal and program automation system. For more information please visit us at www.amazonconsulting.com.
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