A lot goes into building a good IT channel program. A truly-effective program should meet the vendor’s needs while also delivering attractive benefits to our partners.
A successful channel program should deliver a number of key elements, including:
- partner profitability
- partner self-service access to tools and training to help them effectively sell and service customers
- demand creation tools
- partner access to formal education
- collaborative sales engagement, and
- products that enable partners to evolve with their customers’ changing licensing and consumption needs.
In addition, vendors must be easy to do business with, as well as consistent, transparent and fair in our practices all across our business, both at the corporate headquarters and in the field.
Defining a world-class channel program is not overly difficult. But delivering one? As someone who has lived and breathed channel partner programs for decades, I can tell you that it is much more difficult than it sounds. Any vendor who successfully executes most or ALL of these elements day-in, day-out on a global scale is doing a very, very good job, indeed.
So when we were recently awarded the Channel Company’s (CRN magazine) 5–Star Channel Program Award for the third year in a row, it gives us confidence that we are both defining — and executing — the type of channel partner program that delivers value to both Imperva and our nearly 600 partners.
CRN’s 5-Star rating recognizes an elite subset of companies that offer solution providers the best partnering elements in their channel programs. CRN’s research team evaluated our partner program based on investments in program offerings, partner profitability, partner training, education and support, marketing programs and resources, sales support, and communications.
Besides 5 (stars), 3 (years in a row) and 600 (partners), here are some other key numbers to know about us:
- 20 percent Year-over-Year growth in worldwide partner revenue in fiscal year 2018
- 29 percent YoY growth in partner–sourced net new logo revenue
- 37 percent of all world-wide new logo revenue in 2018 was partner-sourced
- 40 percent of all partner revenue was partner-sourced
Ultimately, we on the global channel team view CRN’s 5-Star award not as a final outcome. Rather, it’s a key milepost towards our end goal — to truly deliver a world-class program with significant enduring value to both Imperva and our partners (and customers). We think we are headed in the right direction.
To learn more about Imperva’s channel partner program, visit Imperva.com/Partners/channel-partners or e-mail Partners@Imperva.com.
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