Apttus Accelerate started with a training and partner event at AT&T park that was well attended. More than 140 signed up for a room that seated only 100. That the room was full, with people standing in the aisles, is an indication how motivated its partners are to be part of the event.
Gopkiran Rao SVP verticals and solutions spoke about how Apttus is capturing business across multiple vertical. It is already strong in technology (155 customers), communications (107) and Health and Life sciences (102). The company is aiming to expand their reach further. Rao commented: “We want to dominate Discrete Manufacturing Healthcare & Life sciences”.
To accomplish that goal and meet its wider expansion, Apttus is setting up industry advisory boards onto which it will welcome both customers and partners. This is a sensible step as it will help the company identify best practice across those industries. Through those insights it can deliver enhanced accelerators for new customers and increase the functionality to support them.
Focus on Quality over quantity in channel
The partner sessions indicated how far Apttus has matured as an organisation, something that was reinforced after informal conversations after the event.
Other partner events I have attended are more about motivating the channel partners and telling them how it is. This event was educational with an air of authority that indicated that Apptus know who they are, what their target customer looks like and how they expect to work in the future. It was a professional approach that echoed well at the event and customers would have enjoyed seeing. As the company moves towards an IPO it was an indication that it is shedding some of the startup mentality that no longer works. Having said that it is many of the positive aspects of a startup. While the partner program was not ignored by Apttus there were no concrete details delivered around either costs or compensation. Instead the speakers focused on how Apttus will look to support the channel in the coming months.
Brian Thompson, Sr. Vice President Global Alliances led the sessions that were in themselves educational about how Apttus and its relationship with its partner channel is changing. Apttus admitted that mistakes were made. Those mistakes saw it engaging weaker channel partners in the past that didn’t fit with ethos of the company. There was however no mention of how future partners will be validated. As Thompson confirmed early on the emphasis is now on quality rather than quantity. This is wise considering that the Apttus target market is large enterprise. his message was clear Apttus “will focus on quality not quantity”, Thompson said.
It is also clear that Apttus is growing successfully. The risk for the company is that that while it is seeking to establish a presence in new regions, notably expansion in Europe and Asia, it needs to make sure it does not repeat the mistakes of the past and grab any partner who promises growth.
Good news for customers
To answer that it delivered an insight into the amount of support and oversight that the company will give channel partners. This falls into two areas. During the selling process and beyond Fady Stephanos, VP Eustomer Excellence, Apptus, explained that partners would be support by a CSM (Customer Success Manager) throughout the engagement. For customers this is good news. It means that Apttus is keeping an eye on their projects. It will make sure that the project is focused on business outcomes rather than purely the agreed letter on the engagement contract.
The CSM stays engaged through the processes of deployment, onboarding, adoption, retention, and growth. While there is a function of oversight on how the partner is performing that is something the better partners will welcome. It will also benefit the less experienced partners.
Their role is supplemented by the intelligence that the Apttus platform provides. Apttus is able to monitor how successfully customers are using the solution. This delivers a health check that the CSM can use to discuss a customers approach to using their software. The application monitoring is smart. It helps to ensure that customers are leveraging the platform properly in all areas. This kind of oversight is useful as it helps to turn customers into advocates and means that Apttus can advise customers where to invest in the solution.
The second level of support that Apttus is offering its partners is expert services support. Two roles, delivery owner and solution success owner help partners through the implementation process. They are available to answer technical questions, beyond that which normal support delivers. They are not there to do the work but to support the partner as they do theirs.
Partner certification
Apttus is also evolving their certification process. While they spoke about standardizing the process there was also a mention of personalisation. This was confusing for some in the audience and means that there appears to be no clear identification of what a partner is certified for especially if the certification is personalised for each partner.
However, it does appear that certification falls into a matrix where partners are either Enterprise Global Transformation or Strategic Regional Implementation partners. They can then certify themselves against each of the products that Apttus produces.
Question over future directions
With the main keynote for Accelerate still to come, the content around the product was light. Many partners are already aware of the roadmap and one suspects that there will be more later in the week. What was interesting, to some disturbing and others confusing, was the focus of Apttus on their own platform. Apttus needs to develop integrations with other platforms. It already integrates Apttus Intelligent Cloud (AIC) to Salesforce and Dynamics but others will follow.
The big question is whether the functionality on the Salesforce platform will continue? In the short term the answer is yes. In the longer term, however, the company will focus development on AIC. This could mean that integrated functionality with things like Einstein will probably not be native to AIC. At the moment, the company is working on augmented intelligence with MAX. Apttus is also due to announce several new integrations over the next few months. Which CRM solutions was not revealed but the list of possible CRM software solutions is not endless.
Conclusion
This was a powerful channel event that did a lot to reassure partners that Apttus has finally understood how it needs to work with its channel partners. However, there was disappointment that some of the messages were not as coherent as they might have been.
The mood in the room afterwards was quietly confident though. With the main event yet to come partners seemed quietly confident about doing business and making a real difference to customers.
