141 | Rethinking partner experience

Jon Busby: Welcome again to another episode of the Tech Marketing Podcast. I'm joined by, uh, one of our usual, I'm say usual guests. Karen, you've been with us a few times on the Tech Marketing podcast over the years. Thank you.

Jon Busby:  Yeah. Um, and I think every time I introduce you, you may be in a slightly different role.

So, Karen, where, where are you hailing from today?

Karen Hartsell: I think last time we talked I was at Cradlepoint, part of Ericsson, so still at the same place, but uh, we are now fully Ericsson, so I'm the senior director of global partner programs and operations for, uh, the Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Division.

Jon Busby: Karen, we both had a chance to spend a bit of time together last week at the conference.

Seven I we last talking about actually partner TechX brand new conference that's focused on technology vendors. In the channel. That's not te technology vendors themselves, but technology solutions, uh, to help manage channel and indirect sales better. Uh, first time it was ever run. And I think, uh, firstly a big recognition that how important, uh, technology now is in all of our ecosystems.

Uh, we were there exhibiting one of our wonderful solutions. But Karen, why were you, uh, drawn to part of TechX? You were on a, a few panels, weren't you?

Karen Hartsell: I was on a couple of panels. So I mean, first, uh. I was invited, so that was step one. You know, I was actually thrilled to see this conference happen because it says to me, and John, you and I have been having this conversation for a while, that partner specific technologies hit a tipping point where it could support its own conference.

Um, and so I was excited because it's a passion area of mine that. You know, I think a program, I say this all the time, a program without good execution is just a piece of paper. And more and more you execute your program through technology. And so the fact that we've gotten to a point where there's so many cool solutions out there that it could support its own conference was throwing for me.

Jon Busby: Mm-hmm. I couldn't agree more. And I think it recognizes some of the, some of the stuff that Seb talks about before. And I know that me and you were both bate about this. We delivered many projects together. Uh, along these lines is, is the importance of partner experience in regards to that technology and, and how, how much partner experience in AI was playing.

So, um, which panels were you on? Uh, a, a again there, Karen. So remind me, 'cause I managed to get a chance to go to, to one of them, but, um, uh, which ones were you representing Ericsson for?

Karen Hartsell: It was actually the same panel and it was run twice and it was the one on, um, I can't remember the exact title of it, but it was basically.

Convincing your executive leadership to invest in technology and in the partner experience. And so it was really, um, how you get buy-in from executive leadership. Um, and we had the same panel twice with, uh, there were, it was a different mix of people in different moderators, which was fascinating 'cause it took the conversation in a couple of different directions.

But yeah, it was, it was a fun panel. It was a fun discussion.

Jon Busby: One of the most, I'm gonna create you, one of the favorite things I think I heard you say was, I've never had budget, but I've always got funding. Yeah.

Karen Hartsell: You do? I don't even ask for budget. I don't, no. I ask for funding. Yeah.

Jon Busby: Which I think is, is, is in the world that we live in, in, in the pace that we have.

I don't, I'm not sure many businesses can even forecast a few quarters out. In fact, I was just, I. I was just on a call with another technologist, uh, another one of our clients, and just the pace of change now is so fast. I can't see how any company can run one of these conferences once a year and, and not have the landscape not to have entirely shifted beneath their feet.

So. What were your main, what were your main take? Let, let's dive into partner TechX. Like we saw demos from, uh, Microsoft, from, uh, Nvidia, from ServiceNow, uh, and from Google about how they're bringing AI into their partner program. We, we saw you, I'm gonna say hundreds of experts being become panels. It really was a very much a, a, a kind of reflective.

Retrospective based conference where we, where we got to hear from, from many clients. Like what were your biggest standouts as you, as we come away from it now

Karen Hartsell: I like to do themes of three. So let me, let me think in that term. So I think the first one for me is it, it was a bit of a birds of a feather. I don't know if that's a global term.

Right. You know, and, and birds of a feather, you know, coming together on this. Um, it was. A little surprising how consistent some of the challenges that we all have are. Right. And so it was, there was a little bit of, it was nice to sit, to sit and chat with some like-minded people. You know, you mentioned, um, uh, Stephanie, who I, I can't even remember her last name, but it was just, it was funny 'cause she was in a similar role and just the nodding heads around.

Oh, me too. I heard a lot of that.

Jon Busby: There was a lot of therapy there, wasn't there?

Karen Hartsell: It was a, it was a bit of therapy. And, you know, and, and the, um, the partner operations specific role that started to show up, which is on my team. And then Stephanie had her colleague who was responsible for partner operations.

And so I think in this birds of a feather mindset, the importance of the partner operations role and. And that it is a unique and separate role, um, I think is a theme. I think that's gonna become increasingly important. Over the last few years, we've started to see the role of partner experience come out as a, as a really strong standalone role.

I think that partner experience depends on partner operations, and so it was, um, it was interesting to see a place where we collectively had partner operations as a real focus. So that was the first one. The second observation I had is that it truly is becoming an ecosystem. You know, we've gone from just a couple of marquee players to dozens of marquee players and, you know, represented there.

And, um, if, if the players can't work to together in an ecosystem, they're gonna struggle. I think, um, being, being a participant in this partner ecosystem space, you need to think about how you collaborate within the ecosystem that that. Just, there's so many technologies and some are really leaning into it.

You know, I think about 360 insights and their strong ecosystem approach. Um, I think that that was, uh, that was really a trend that I saw. And the third one, um, which is sort of the elephant in the room, is that everybody's talking about AI now. Everybody's talking about ai. We'll probably dig into this a little bit deeper.

Um, it still feels like a lot of it is, you know, a shiny penny. Um, and, and I still feel like there is a need to be able to articulate the value of it, the true problem. You know, you know how I always talk about like, don't, don't send me a product. I'm solving a problem. Let's talk about the outcome. I still feel like AI's got a lot of shiny penny about it and the way that I saw it demoed and talked about.

Um, but AI is. Everywhere. And I think the, the art of it is gonna be to try and figure out, as you know, partner and partner operations, how do you deploy it in a way that's actually accretive to your partner experience and not just another shiny penny.

Jon Busby: That was the big takeaway for me, actually. Like the number one, if I was to like, if, if I was to class around one idea, uh, and it's, you know, we saw these fantastic demos from Google, from Microsoft, your ServiceNow and Nvidia.

At the, at the start of the sessions, really kind of setting the tone of like, this is what's possible. And the stand, the standout from there was was, it probably was Google's, where they were showing agreed how they were able, able to use like data. Like that's one of the key things that we'll come back to data in a moment.

Uh, and AI to then produce better insights to produce better next actions for those partners. But the real, the, the real. GM here is that all of this stuff's stuff looks super exciting and it's super sexy, but it's not the what you are building, it's the how you go about doing it that I think is most important.

Um, and nobody was in my head no. And in the sessions I attended, nobody was really talking about the how. They weren't saying, here is how you identify the key use cases. Here is how you identify the problems or the gaps in your partner experience. It was, we were all focused on the, on the shiny penny and like look at where we could, where we could head.

Right. And I'm not saying that the, that means that the whats doesn't matter 'cause it absolutely does. Um, but you've, you know, you've gotta make sure you step through the how, the why, and then get to the what last and not try and just jump to, to, to something AI for AI's sake. Um. And that, that's, that was, that was my biggest, biggest concern is like, I could see some real value here.

I agree. Um, but it's, but I don't think, I don't think many businesses were really asking themselves. There was one slide, I think I'm gonna give the Nvidia lady credit for this. It was right at the end of our presentation that went, oh, here's the process you do to get there. And it was like five points on a slide.

And I was like, that's the most valuable, valuable thing I've seen this morning. Um, but, but I, I think it probably went, kind of went, went over most people's heads. But my, my biggest. Piece of advice would be really focus on the, the how you are gonna get there. Yeah. Because the technology, by the time you start deploying this, the technology's gonna change and be different tomorrow to what it is today.

And if you haven't got a good foundation and a good process, um, I just, I, I think many of it's gonna fall apart and come back to your panel if you don't have a way of proving ROI. Um, or at least having a framework for how you can go and report on what you've delivered. It's very, very easy to spin your wheels.

Karen Hartsell: Yeah. And before you sell your executives on it, you gotta sell your partners on it. And so, you know, and I completely, the one thing that struck me is, and I love your framing on the, the wet and how is, um, a lot of these things were once your partner logs into your portal. Here are the things you're gonna do to make it more fun or exciting or sexy.

And you know, and I think there's some goodness in that, but nobody said, here's how you're gonna get more people to log into your part portal, which if you ask any partner, manager, partner, account manager, program manager, operations, the number one challenge is driving partner engagement. Getting them to come in through the front door to start.

And so if you are not talking about how to make that part of the experience better. What they do once they're in your portal, is it best gonna benefit 20% of your partners? And it's probably not gonna change the trajectory. 'cause those were the guys who were willing to do it anyway. So if you're not thinking about an outcome of, I'm going to reduce the amount of time it takes my partners to do things, and I can tell you from personal experience right now, partners will always go through the path of least resistance.

So logging into your portal is a pain in the butt. Then they're gonna go and email their partner account manager, or call their favorite rep or whatever, just like they're doing today to get around your systems. And nobody was talking about AI to make the front door experience easier and to drive, you know, and to be able to articulate it in a what like measurable value to say.

You know, this thing that you think is easier by calling the rep takes you 20 minutes. Now this'll take you two minutes. This is actually easier way. So I think there's a component there that it, that was missed for me.

Jon Busby: Here's one conversation. Um, and we, we do need to come back to data 'cause I think that's a, another key one to discuss.

But the, uh, here's another conversation you've sparked though, and it's, it's not one that was necessarily discussed openly at the, at the conference, but it's one that I had with one of the attendees, uh, whilst I was there. And it's something. Carol, me and you have theorized for, for many, many years. So I'm gonna ask this in a form of a question.

We'll see where we end up, which is, do you think with some of the talk around identification, um, with agent-based AI responses, by the way, is a, is a huge, is a podcast in itself debating the different type of agents approaches, but it, it gives us an opportunity to move away entirely from the partner portal.

Um, do you think, and you know what's, you know, you, you just mentioned we, we struggle to get partners to sign in. Like, but you still mentioned the partner portals there. Like, do you, can you see a world where we don't have a partner portal? Uh, and, and is that getting closer?

Karen Hartsell: I hope so. You think about your like, and you and I have talked about this portal list.

Kind of experience. It doesn't mean the same tools and experiences and functions aren't brought to life for your partners. It means you think about it totally, totally differently. And if you think about the impact that something like Alexa has had on our life, it's not that I don't turn on my light switches, I just don't need a light switch anymore.

It, it actually happens to still be there. I no longer engage with it. I'm, I'm talking to a thing over here that's turning on my lights. I don't know if that's a good analogy or not, but, um, but, but this idea is like the, the foundational components of a portal will probably still be there, but the partner is going to experience it in a completely different way.

And I think that that's the, the technologies that think about leapfrogging the norm, like you all are over here. Worrying about how to get more people to log into your portal. We're gonna make login irrelevant. We're gonna remove the need to log in at all. And, and if you start to think about that, and that's, you know, that's where real innovation gets super fun is how could it be, you know, we're all walking around with one of these, why can't I talk into this and do what I wanna do?

For example,

Jon Busby: I think we are due a paradigm shift. Is that right way of putting it? Yeah. Paradigm shift. I think so. In, in the partner portals, I. I want to fight it because I don't think it necessarily is the optimal interface, but I think we are due a paradigm shift. Um, I was, you know, so to give you a different example, let's look at, um, audit, right?

Audit was an experience that, uh, five years ago, businesses, you, you'd have to get your, you know, one of your big fives would come into the business and they'd put paper up on the conference room windows so nobody could see in, and they would sit there and pour through the books and ask questions. Now, you know, a few years back that became real time, right?

We can access your books in real time, we can audit you in real time. Doesn't need to be paying through the end of the year. And now it's getting to a point where it's not even humans reviewing it, it's, it can be AI and they can, they can pick up on stuff. You know, we, that's, that's the paradigm shift that's happened in, in audits.

Same in, in, uh, legal right. You know, you, you don't need the same level of expertise to look up case law. And I think we are due one of these in the channel, but I, I'm just. I'm, for some reason I still wanna fight it, but I can see it coming. Um, I, I dunno why. I dunno why I wanna fight it.

Karen Hartsell: I was gonna say I was Why do you wanna fight it?

Because, you know, it's funny you use the term paradigm shift, which I do completely agree with, and I think a lot of people would say AI is a paradigm shift. I would actually argue that AI is enabling. Many paradigm shifts, right? So AI ist of itself a paradigm shift. It is an enabler of many, many paradigm shifts.

'cause by itself it won't change anything. But if people use AI to think about things very, very differently, there's your shift. Um, and I think with partner portals, it's, it's AI will enable a completely different way of thinking. Um, and I also think as. You know, we talk a lot about generation. I've got twins that are graduating from college in a, a couple weeks.

This is very top of mind for me, but their expectations of technology are driven by their home, personal use of technology, and when they hit the workforce, they're gonna have a very different expectation of technology than the people like myself who are sort of later in that career journey. Right? And so the, the bleed over from.

Like my kids, you know, they're, they're using ai. They're the first generation to use GBT is part of their studies. And, you know, their expectation is that when they get to the workforce, that's also going to continue to be there and accessible because that's a tool set that they use to get their jobs done in life, in school and now in work.

And so I think that, that it's not gonna be optional. Like there's a sense that it's optional. I just don't think it's gonna be optional. I think that. That the young talent that's coming into the workforce now is gonna demand different ways of working.

Jon Busby: It's gonna be really interesting to see how we get that.

But let's come back to you can't get good AI without a good foundation of data. And that was one of the other standouts for me is, is just the amount of people that talked, uh, you know, Google's example again, that we both, that we both got behind, that only works because they have the right data behind it.

Some of the conversations we had with other attendees, I, I, I would say, was very much focused around getting their data in a place where they could analyze it, where they could use it to do these things. Yeah. The, the good news is I think we're. A few years back, people knew they had this as a challenge.

They had, they, everyone always had a project to solve it. They hadn't solved it in the last few years, but we're now, we are now seeing technology come in to help achieve that. So we've, you know, we hear things like Snowflake and Databricks and, um, and info sum and, and these other platforms creep in. Um, and this was definitely the first year where.

Everyone felt more confident they were gonna get there. Uh, but I mean, you've just gone through this transition yourself with us. Like what advice would you give to people?

Karen Hartsell: We're going through it. Yeah. I don't think we've gotten through it. I think we're going through it and, and I think that there's still, uh, there's it, it's funny because there's still an archaic component of you just have to go in with hands on keyboards and a lot of the times and fix it.

Um, and I don't think that. We're doing anything that couldn't have been done a long time ago. I think that this is just a forcing function to do the, you know, sort of like housekeeping work that we all know that we have to do. Um, but what, what we're using technology for is to expose the data more systematically to the people who are most likely to recognize if it's wrong.

So what, what I'm, you know, 'cause we, we tend to have like, we're gonna hire a couple of interns to clean up the data. Like, who has not said that, that like, we're gonna get some inexpensive talent to come in and clean up the data. The problem is that talent has zero knowledge of the data. I. They will look at it and they will not see if something is wrong.

And so, uh, they may not cost a lot of money in terms of, you know, dollars per hour or, you know, currency per hour to, to hire them. But I. As talented, as smart as they are, they have zero knowledge of the data. So you can teach 'em how to use your systems and they're really smart and they'll figure out how to do that, but they're not gonna recognize if the data's wrong, which is sort of job one of an auditor.

So what we're looking to do, and, and you know, we get pushback because the number one thing, we can't turn this on for partners until the data's clean. I'm like, we can't get the data clean till we turn it on for partners. Turn it on for partners, let them see how their data looks in our systems, and we're gonna start getting phone calls pretty quick to say, why do you have this guy as expired certifications?

He doesn't even work here anymore. It's like, yeah, well you never told us that. So in our system, he is still in your account. So. I think the minds, it's just a mindset shift. It's not so much a technology, but, but you gotta get away from this idea of only expose the data once you feel like it's a hundred percent.

I think there's a good enough element, right? So make sure it's not complete garbage, you're gonna kill confidence. But there's a moment where you say, the only way we're gonna get cleaner data is if we put it in front of the people who are most likely to recognize if it's wrong.

Jon Busby: Yeah, I, I think, I think there's a big wor, I mean, we've done this on multiple projects, actually, Karen, we, we did this, um, uh, in a marketplace trying to expose stats to, to partners before we found there were, there were a few problems, but it's, you know, I'm kind of reminded about Reid Hoffman quota.

Like, if you are, if you are not embarrassed, you've launched too late. Like, you've gotta get stuff out there. You've gotta, there's a lot of, especially when people talk about data, they, they worry that it has to be a hundred percent perfect. Don't get me wrong, it should be if you design some of your workflows correctly, but it shouldn't be a reason why you go launch.

Um, because so many, so much of the partner tools. Put tool stack. You know, let's use another example, partner locators. Something I'm very passionate about is based on data. And so if you're not, if you haven't got the right data, partners aren't gonna be ranked properly. They're not gonna, you know, I agree with you.

I think GI giving partners and the people that know if it's wrong, the right access, and then giving them the tools to be able to provide the feedback as gonna be one of your best first approaches.

Karen Hartsell: And that will drive them to log into your system and fix it faster than seeing it wrong. Like it, it drives action.

Now, of course, you've gotta stay thinking about governance and compliance, right? You need to make sure you're not exposing data in an in uncompliant way. I think that that is where I spend my energy to make sure that a partner can only see the data we have for that partner, that energy we put a lot of energy into, but making sure that partner data is accurate.

Of course, we make our best effort, but that partner is gonna be the most expert to tell us.

Jon Busby: I I want to use the last, I know we've only got a couple of minutes left here just to talk about some of the other I items you referenced as well. So we talked about AI and data. I completely agree with the role of partner ops.

Um, it's, it was, it was surprise. Firstly, it was awesome to see it be recognized. Uh, we've been speaking to a lot of partner ops people recently and if, if your in, if your passion is part of ops, you are listening to this, do drop us a a, a line 'cause we'd love to hear from you. Um, but the, the, the se your second one, the ecosystem piece.

I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give 360 who, you know, we we're quite, we're affiliated with them here together, a bit of a call out that they have done something which has never been possible, I think in our space, which is build the ecosystem. I'm really shown what ecosystem orchestrate the orchestration looks like.

Um, you know, that, you know, I can, we always talk about living and breathing and, uh, dog fooding, if you will. And I don't think we've done enough of it. And I, I really, I would say it's the, it is the future of where many businesses are going. You know, we use the term teaming as well, Karen, multiple partners working together on a deal.

Karen Hartsell: Yeah.

Jon Busby: But I think many people don't realize what it, the energy and effort that it takes to actually make that happen. Um, and it's, we saw some of the solutions there. People like crossbeam. Um, that, that, that have been around for a while, but I think we also started to see just the, for me, the effort that it takes to get there.

But yeah. What, what are your thought, what are your comments around the ecosystem, Karen?

Karen Hartsell: Well, I think there's a couple things. I think the first thing I would say is it makes more space for innovation. I. When a small niche player can come in and solve one aspect of a problem in an ecosystem, that it, it lowers the barrier for that cool innovation.

And I think the other is back to our, our portal's even gonna be a thing because an ecosystem really focuses more on. Functionality and experience for the partner, and less on just one tool and one way of doing things. And so I think ecosystems are the future, which is what opens the door to, maybe not no portal, but a very different way of thinking about the portal experience.

And it, it is absolutely gonna breed innovation

Jon Busby: and the Palmer experience as well. So I completely agree. Karen, it's been a real pleasure to have you back on the Tech Marketing Podcast again. This has been in insightful for me, and it was, it was a pleasure. Of course, to, to both of us had the pleasure of building up the pilot TechX, the first pilot, TechX,

Karen Hartsell: hopefully the first of many.

Yeah, it was super cool.

Jon Busby: Look forward to seeing you again next year. Thanks, Karen.

All right, thanks.