The 3 Keys to a Successful Partner Program

Selling software and technology solutions have been my passion for over 20 years and during that time I’ve worked as a partner to many large and small corporations. Some with a well-defined partner program that offered support and helped me succeed while others held more of a Hunger’s Game-style approach in which I was given one map and had to figure out a plan of attack on my own.

As I’ve moved into an alliance leadership role, I’ve spent time analyzing my previous experience as a partner and where those alliance programs succeeded and failed. This has helped me develop the best strategic alignment for success throughout our OneStream Alliance program. Growth and success require constant nurturing. It’s never just one thing that contributes to the success but a multitude that can be broken out into three basic parts:

The 3 Keys to a Successful Partner Program

1. Partnering with the Right Folks
An alliance partner program offers a wide variety of opportunities for product and services providers to expand their reach. At OneStream, we focus on partnering with advisory/implementation partners that have earned a Trusted Advisor status in the market. Over the years we have carefully selected our partners to ensure not only our customers’ success but also the success of our collective businesses. Not every partner is the right fit and as we continue to expand our reach around the globe we will maintain our search in working with only the best partners.

Our core mission has always been 100% customer success and everything we do points our work efforts to that end. The best way to ensure alignment on that success is to work with partners that share those same values. That’s not to say we won’t experience bumps along the road. Quite the contrary. It’s the shared mindset of recognizing that bumps may happen but together we can adjust and correct for customer success. We work together and we win as “OneTeam.”

2. Framework for Excellence
A successful program requires the right support, defined steps to success, and education. Our partners are provided a constant stream of educational materials to communicate our approach and messaging. To be a trusted advisor, you must know your product and the value it delivers. It’s important to educate around market messaging, product knowledge, training, analysts reviews, competitive comparisons and building a strong delivery capacity by way of a Center of Excellence (COE) framework. This framework then creates the foundation, a set of standard best practices, on how to operate optimally and ensure the internal consultant community is coming up the ranks with a focus on delivery success.

3. Creating a Community
As we say at OneStream, all boats rise with the tide. For years, we have fostered the idea of a big happy family, and that includes our customer and partner ecosystem. Our partners are part of the OneStream family and we support them in their growth and continued success. We layer them into our daily lives, by co-selling, co-marketing, and co-delivering with them. We share in ideas, materials, hands-on training, partner enablement, and alliance outreach. We believe we are better together, and that ensures our customers are always taken care of.

Which is why I am personally excited for this next journey of sharing OneStream with the broader market. We are launching a OneStream certification program and getting ready to publish the first book, the OneStream Foundation Handbook. I personally love books and all the benefits I get from reading. Whenever I am in doubt I reach for a book or online materials, to research a topic so that I feel I have a complete view. To have the OneStream foundation book coming out will give the partner community a physical guide for our amazing platform. It’s an asset anyone can go back to and reference from time to time. Our training, reference book, hands-on experience and now certification exam will allow our partners to build their knowledge, test their skills and become the best OneStream resource in the market.

Learn More
OneStream continues to grow and our journey is far from over. If you are looking to expand your EPM/CPM practice with a market-leading solution, consider joining the OneStream partner community. Our best in class program won’t disappoint.