Zebra Technologies’ PartnerConnect programme is 10 years old and has thousands of partners involved in it across the world. But to maintain its status at the top, it must constantly evolve to keep ahead of trends in the various markets is partners operate in.
This year marks 10 years since Zebra Technologies set up its PartnerConnect programme. The aim then was to unify its global channel partners under a single, comprehensive programme designed to foster growth, profitability and success for the entire ecosystem. A decade on, it’s fair to say it has achieved its aim, with more than 10,000 partners active in PartnerConnect across the world across many different categories.
“We’re very proud of the programme,” says Greg Williams, VP channel EMEA at Zebra Technologies. “Our business is very channel-centric and therefore PartnerConnect needs to be at the centre. We have regional owners of the programme that maintain the success of it.
“Fundamentally we make sure that we’ve got good clear lines of responsibility and ownership and accountability with our channel. At the same time, it’s a growth vehicle.”
Greg adds that it is a diverse programme. “One size doesn’t fit all,” he says. “If you’re trading with a partner in the Middle East, they’re very different to one in Europe and therefore it needs to be tailored to the local geography. Also with specialisations, whether that be partners in our core businesses like scanning, printing and mobile computing, they have a very different need, whether that’s commercial, technological or enablement need, from partners that are in a more advanced space. It’s making sure that we’ve got specialisations and differentiation across the spectrum.”
Reacting to trends
It is also about reacting to trends. “There’s a consistent theme of ease of doing business or removing friction that I heard from the channel,” says Greg. “Many end users and therefore partners need to ensure they can access the right technology quickly, therefore it’s imperative that we make that process as frictionless as possible for everyone and is something we are constantly working towards.”
Greg adds that there are still opportunities for partners that resell hardware, but these are reducing, while those for software are increasing. “Whether that’s an organisation that has their own software or an independent software vendor (ISV) track in our PartnerConnect program, we’re seeing a lot of ecosystems built, with partners partnering with an ISV to deliver the outcome that the customer wants,” he says.
“Customers are also increasingly asking for outcomes. They’re not buying a piece of hardware, a piece of software, and some services, they’re saying, ‘my problem statement is… and I don’t mind what hardware, software, and services fix it, but I’m going to hold you, the channel partner, accountable for fixing it.’ The fix being the outcome that it generates, which is typically the ROI, the saving, the cost removal or profitability or revenue enhancement. Our partners must evolve to be more proactive and outcome-based, which brings a lot more complexity and challenges for them, but ones that Zebra can help with.”
Maintaining growth
Evolution is critical to the success of PartnerConnect too. Greg adds that Zebra is the market leader, with the most channel partners, but he is careful to note that the company does not take this for granted and works hard to maintain – and further grow – that position.
Part of this evolution involves taking in stakeholder feedback. “We did this at the beginning of the year,” says Greg. “I interviewed several of our key internal stakeholders from CEO down, and I selected a group of north of 20 partners and disties externally and asked them what’s working and not working and how can we improve. I recorded those conversations so I could pull out areas where we need to continually evolve. That feedback was golden for me, so we can now make some tweaks in Europe and feedback to the global PartnerConnect organisation to evolve the entire programme.”
Close relationships and regular feedback are key for Zebra, and something Greg is keen to develop further in his role, which he was brought into last year when Tim Stoddrd, GM of Zebra in Europe, made some structural changes to put more focus on the channel organisation and asked him to run a consolidated channel organisation across EMEA.
Historically, Zebra’s channel operation has been led by regional sales managers, who dealt with channel partners from small to very large. “It was a lot to do, and it was imperative that we had enough focus on the respective go-to-markets, whether that is end user sales, channel sales or distribution sales,” explains Greg. “One of the objectives of making the change was to put the focus on the channel organisation and the distribution organisation, which is incredibly important. Globally, north of 80% of our revenue goes by the channel, and that’s true for EMEA too. Out of that channel number, more than 90% is delivered by distribution.
“It’s imperative that we focus on the disties and the channel. We’re only five and a half months into this journey, but I’m seeing the benefit of giving the channel a voice at the top table and putting a spotlight on channel organisations to make sure that it’s managed appropriately with channel expertise.”
AI role
For disties and the channel alike AI plays an increasing role, and Zebra is ready for this. Indeed, a recent report by the Wall Street Journal listed the top 10 technology organisations that are ready for the emergence of AI and Zebra was number 10 on the list. “This was an unbelievably proud moment,” says Greg. “I see AI has multiple benefits.
“We’ve also recently launched Partner Assistant, an AI tool that all our registered partners have access to and gives them at their fingertips access to everything from service details to product comparisons, and it’s constantly learning, as you would expect. We’re starting to get a lot of adoption of that tool and repeat users of it.
“Outside of that, we’ve built a go-to-market strategy around AI tools which we’ve offered to our partner community and our ISVs, which enables them to build on-device AI applications using our enablers, onboard feeds from our AI platform into their own platform, which we’re starting to see a lot of pick-up of.
“We’re also starting to build out various blueprints, which are chargeable assets, where we work with a customer and a partner on an outcome they want, and we’ll build tools that delivers that outcome.
“One completed example is a blueprint called Picture Proof of Delivery with FedEx. The challenge was twofold: FedEx wanted to speed up doorstep deliveries while also improving proof of delivery. Complaints had arisen when parcels were reported as undelivered, and the existing photos were sometimes blurred or lacked enough background detail to show clearly where a parcel had been left.
Privacy was another important consideration. FedEx needed the data-capture process to comply with local regulations, including the ability to blur people or personal information on labels. Crucially, this had to happen on-device, without relying on a cloud connection, because delivery drivers work in areas with limited connectivity.
“Zebra’s AI blueprint addresses this by guiding the driver as they capture the delivery image. The system can recognise whether the parcel is in the correct safe-place location and whether there are any privacy concerns. A visual indicator shows whether the image is acceptable, and any personal data is automatically blurred by the AI before the proof-of-delivery image is completed.
“There’s huge potential with AI and that’s informing a lot of products now, and customers are demanding it, whether it automates functions or analyses the data it produces.”
Future
Looking to the future, Greg is focused on ensuring that Zebra maintains and grows its market position. “We are making sure that we’re listening to our customers, partners and disties to understand what their futures are,” he says. “When you’ve got many of the top customers in each of the core verticals, that informs our roadmap going forward, which is important and gives us an opportunity to get the partner voice into the roadmap, which is imperative.
“Many partners are evolving, whether they’re onboarding new technologies, new people with technological skills, or acquiring rival businesses, to make themselves look as attractive as possible to the market, or, for some, external investors.
“One common theme I’m seeing is recurring revenue and as a service models. It’s imperative that the software assets that we’re building and launching not only deliver value to the partners – i.e, it solves a customer’s problem – but it also becomes attractive to the partner because it gives them a recurring revenue model. If they can bolster their balance sheet with X thousand pounds of recurring revenue on an annual basis, that makes them look a lot more attractive to external investment or acquisition.”
Greg adds that Zebra had strong Q1 earnings, bolstered by numerous strong product launches. “There are more launches to come, which will help with the evolution of our partners,” says Greg. “We also plan to continue to expand our partner network into new areas with automation, as well as continually adding new sales resources to ensure that we can cover more partners and customers.
“We’re building out a model to ensure that we can cover as broad a portion of the market as possible because as good as the market share that we have currently is, there’s always more to get.”
