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Mark: Welcome to the Partners Strategy Network podcast. I'm Mark and I'm here with Wesley Coelho. Hey Wesley, how are you doing today?
Wesley: Doing great. What are we talking about today, Mark?
Mark: Well, in a previous episode we talked about a comparison of the different kinds of service partners. We talked about the global system integrators or GSIs, and we also talked about the regional system integrators or RSIs. But today I want to do a drill down on GSI. And we've identified some of the names of the big guys, the big global system integrators.
Those are companies like Accenture, CapGemini, HCL, Tata. A lot of software companies ask the question of what should be their GSI strategy. What size of company do you have to be to even begin playing with the size? Which GSIs should they prioritize their work with? How many can you effectively partner with at one time? What kind of timelines and resources do I need to be effective and successful? Lots of questions. So what's the right starting point. Let's just start off with, is there a minimum size company that you should be before you're engaging with the GSI?
Wesley: I'd say there's no hard rules. But I’d say a company needs to be making at least 20 million in revenue to have enough momentum to grab the interest of those big GSIs. Unless you're known in the marketplace, and you have some amount of customer pull, it's really going to be an uphill battle to get a GSI engaged.
Mark: Well, that's good to know because I've often heard GSIs can suck the life out of you as a small company and consume all your resources without really producing opportunities. Do you think it's worthwhile to engage with the global system integrators.
Wesley: it's certainly true that they can suck the life out of you. And that's something to be mindful of. But on the other hand, if you can make it work, the benefits are tremendous. So there's a risk, but there's also a possibility of a very large reward. Another thing to think about is, can you really afford having these big GSIs align with your competitors before you get to them?
Mark: Yeah, that's always a big factor. You never want to have your competitors beat you to it. So, if I'm going to take this on, how do I motivate a GSI partner? How do I get them really interested in my company?
Wesley: the GSIs are often going to be motivated by one of two economic drivers. Either you've got a solution that helps them drive more services, revenue, or your solution helps them be more efficient and effective in their client delivery projects.
Mark: Okay. So That's really interesting. So you're saying it's either you're going to be providing a solution that drives more consultants and helps them increase their services revenue, or you got to figure out, a play in which you're going to help them be more efficient and an effective and increasing their client, satisfaction and their delivery.
Wesley: That's right. When you figure out which side of the equation you're on and what's your most powerful value prop, now you've got to identify specific practices within those that will benefit from your technology. And you find this practice and you’ve got to get them sold on your value proposition. And this practice is the part of the organization that does the actual delivery of the services work.
And once you've got them on. You're not done. You also need to get the account teams on board. So there'll be another group that owns the customer relationship has a lot of power within the organization and they need to also agree that this is something that they're going to position for their clients.
Mark: So it's well known that this process can take a year or more. Wesley, what are some of the milestones and metrics to track your progress along the way to make sure on the right track
Wesley: When you're getting started, There are some great milestones that you can look out for. One of them is to get a GSI to publicly announce or endorse a partnership or a collaboration with you.
Mark: Just getting one of these major companies to announce a partnership, that's a real milestone that adds a lot of value.
Wesley: yeah, they don't do that lightly. And so, you know you're making progress when that happens. Another thing you'd be looking for is a GSI to position your solution in a customer account somewhere where you aren't already, if they're bringing your solution to the table, you know you're starting to get some traction with that GSI. Another thing to look for is just setting up a partner agreement. So once you've got a partner agreement with the GSI that shows a level of commitment, and that's usually a milestone you need to cross before you're ready to really do business. So that's a good one to keep an eye out for.
Consultants trained. They'll often want to get trained. If they're interested in your technology and want to work with you, then, you'll have the opportunity to get some of their consultants trained as something that you can look out for as milestone. And ultimately you want to become a part of the offering or the recipe for how they do their services delivery and be baked into how they normally go to market.
Mark: And is that part of what I've heard of called the solution stack?
Wesley: Absolutely. So that will be part of the entire solution that they're bringing to their clients.
Mark: Got it. And tell me more about some of the classics. I mean, at the end of the day we want dollars. We went opportunities, right?
Wesley: Right. And so once you get going, then you can rely more heavily on the classic metrics. Like how many customer opportunities a GSI has sourced. What is the dollar value of the pipeline that has been generated? How many consultants have been trained and ultimately how much revenue is coming from the opportunities that a GSI.
Mark: Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense. So tell me now, how do we resource this? is one person having one GSI Alliance manager. To build out the pipeline of potential GSI partners.
Wesley: One person is definitely enough to build up your pipeline. And then once you get going and you've got a mature GSI relationship, that's going to take some heavy lifting and you likely be aligning one person to every one or two GSI.
Mark: Well, Wesley what a great discussion. I hope everyone found this really valuable information. Join us at the Partner Strategy Network LinkedIn group to continue the discussion and share your stories.
