Partner Operations + Partner Management at Ubicquia: From Confusion to Clarity with Magentrix

Intro + The Status of Ubicquia’s Partner Program

Ubicquia is a technology company that specializes in intelligent infrastructure for municipalities and utilities. They provide a range of products and services aimed at enhancing urban infrastructure and improving the quality of life. Their offerings include smart street lighting, streetlight, situational awareness platforms, and smart grid sensors to make the world smarter, safer and more connected. 

Ubicquia goes to market with a hybrid sales model, incorporating both a direct sales team and an indirect sales team.

Partner Program‍

Year established:

2022 (by Allen Dixon). Previous to 2022, Ubicquia had a collection of partners that they were working without a formal partner program.

Ubicquia’s Partner Team Size: 7

Types of Partners: 

• Agents (divided into verticals)
  • Smart Street Lighting Agents
    • Lighting agents augment Ubicquia’s Smart Street Lighting sales team. 
    • They are able to use their local presence to identify and engage potential customers. 
    • Since most of Ubicquia’s agents carry complementary product lines, they can turn a component sale into a solution sale. 
    • They’re also a valuable source of information on changes in the market.
  • Smart Grid Agents
    • SmartGrid agents use their relationships to position Ubicquia’s distribution infrastructure monitoring solutions with utilities. They’re also invaluable in proposing new use cases for Ubicquia products.
• ‍Reseller‍
  • Networking & Public Safety Resellers
    • These partners integrate components from multiple vendors to offer complete solutions to their enterprise and municipal clients. 
    • They combine their detailed knowledge of different video management systems, camera types and manufacturers, and available applications with the placement and power flexibility Ubicquia’s solutions provide.‍
• Referral
• Consultant‍
  • An invaluable resource for Ubicquia. 
  • Companies and governments with a problem to solve often start with consultants – including architecture and engineering firms. 
  • By continuously educating the consultant community on the benefits of Ubicquia’s solutions, Ubicquia gains a valuable early advantage when the consultant positions the solutions with their clients.
• ‍Technology‍
  • Our customers and partners are often using a product or application from another technology vendor.
  • After we confirm compatibility, marrying Ubicquia’s solutions with these other technology vendors creates a win-win-win scenario. Ubicquia technology partners become evangelists for Ubicquia and Ubicquia does the same for them, expanding the reach and influence for both parties. 

Number of Partners:

• Current partner count: 70 
• In growth mode:
  • By the end of 2025, Ubicquia anticipates their partner count to grow to 100 partners. 
  • And by the end of 2026, the count could double to approximately 200 partners.

Before the launch of their formal partner program, Ubicquia had partners, but it was unclear: 

• Who those partners were
• What roles they had
• What territories they covered 

Ubicquia recognized the need to better structure their partnership approach, leading to the strategic hiring of Allen Dixon. With his expertise, Allen was poised to significantly enhance Ubicquia's partner program management efforts.

Allen Dixon:

• Allen comes from an extensive professional background of business development and partner management. 
• His current title at Ubicquia is Director of Worldwide Channels, with a focus on Programs and Enablement.
• Allen played a pivotal role in building Ubicquia’s current partner program as he transformed the partner processes and operations, resulting in significant time savings for the company 

The Challenge: Partner Management - Current State & PRM Goals

Current State:

A network of: 

• Spreadsheets 
• Old emails 
• Scattered records 

There was no central repository to serve as the source of truth for all partner-related data and files.
Objectives for the PRM:

• Deal Management & Partner Pipeline Visibility:
  • To establish a deal registration system
  • To create the ability for partners to look at their pipelines 
  • For the internal team to receive updates on partner pipelines
• Partner Communication: Efficient ways to communicate and stay aligned 
• Partner Content Management: Managing sales resources, technical resources, marketing resources, and eliminating some of the administrative work that comes with it.
• Ease of Partner Experience (PX):
  • Making it easy for partners to sell Ubicquia’s products and remove friction from the sales process. 
  • “That's our goal: to be friction-free when it comes to working with the partners.”

The key priority for Ubicquia was figuring out an efficient way to communicate to all their channel partners and attaining alignment between the direct sales team and their channel sales team.

All goals combined, Allen knew it was time to set up PRM software for Ubicquia’s partner program and immediately embarked on his quest to find one.

The Discovery

Allen already had a deep familiarity with PRM options, having conducted comprehensive searches for PRM software at two previous organizations. This expertise made him well-equipped for the task.

PRMs Assessment

1. Magentrix:
   • Functionality & Price: “We found that Magentrix offered the combination of features and functionalities we needed to achieve our objectives, all at a very accessible price point (not the cheapest but accessible).”
   • Customization & DIY Nature: “What pushed Magentrix to the top consideration spot for us was Magentrix’s customization capabilities. This lets us tailor the platform to our specific needs, including custom branding and layout adjustments.”
   • Customer Service: “Additionally, we were more comfortable dealing with the Magentrix team than any other vendor we spoke to.”
   • Salesforce Integration: “We appreciated the bidirectional integration with Salesforce. This connection allowed our partners to communicate with our Salesforce system and vice versa, which was a significant advantage for our partner operations.”
   • “Before I made my final decision, I talked to colleagues in the industry,  who had also evaluated several PRM solutions and chose Magentrix.”
2. Competing Solutions:
   • Allen reviewed other PRM software, including: Impartner, Mindmatrix and PartnerStack.
   • While some offered similar core capabilities (Deal Registration, Portal Organization, Pipeline Management) then Magentrix, they felll short in other categories:
     
     1. Price: “Upfront pricing and the potential to be even more expensive as Ubicquia’s partner management needs grow.” 
     2. Limited Licenses: “The number of accounts allowed before purchasing additional capacity was too few to handle the rapid growth we’re expecting.”
     3. Storage capacity: “for resource material was smaller, which would also lead to higher charges down the road.” 
     4. Magentrix’ LMS was more robust.” 
     5. Setup time: “The others quoted a few weeks for setup time. Magentrix set up time was weeks. If we didn’t have the back and forth communications and if we had our SFDC assigned to the project full-time, we could have easily had the portal up and running in a week. Since our implementation, Magentrix has gone through various upgrades; if we started today with the current platform, I bet we could be up and running in 2 or 3 days.”

Disqualified PRMs: “One of the PRM options we looked at was disqualified from our list as it wasn’t a fit for our partner program type. It seemed to be geared for affiliate recruitment and support.”

Results

Increased Partner Deal Submissions via Deal Management for Streamlined Partner Operations

Before: 

• There was no automatic and consolidated deal registration system in existence and deal management was difficult.
  • “Our sales team’s territories didn’t always line up with our partners’ territories. If a partner had multiple projects across our sales territories, we didn’t have a system in place to allow us to recognize the total activity that partner was engaged in and avoid conflict with other partners.
• “Since we did not have a formal way to engage with the partners, they didn't have a formal way to engage with us either [for deal submission].” 
• Lack of Deal Updates or Timely Updates: Partners had to call Ubicquia to notify them and vice versa.
• Less Partner Lead Submissions: Approximately 35% of partners were apprehensive to submit leads to Ubicquia as they reported they were concerned about the exclusivity and not being able to prove that it really came from them first.

After:

• “One of the things that we absolutely love about Magentrix is the two-way nature of it. Your integration with Salesforce, and the fact that you're actually on the Salesforce store, was a huge plus. The ability for our partners to communicate with our Salesforce CRM and for our Salesforce to communicate with our partners was a real driving characteristic.” 
• “We allow our partners to go in and update things on their opportunities. If a close date changes, if the next step changes – [when the change from Magentrix syncs with Salesforce, our SFDC automation sends an alert to the opportunity owner – this helps our sales people stay] on top of the opportunity. That was completely missing before. So that integration has been huge. We use this religiously. We're on top of deal registration and pipeline every day.”
  • Watch video to hear this quote and more
• De-escalating Channel Conflict and Increasing Partner Deal Transparency for Internal Sales Team:
  “We were seeing a big gap between our channel people and our field salespeople. There was tension there. There's this fundamental mistrust among salespeople of the channel team trying to take their opportunities and trying to take their sales.”
  

Ease of PX via Document Management for Partner Enablement and via Partner Team Access Management for Streamlined Partner Operations

Document Management

Before:

• “It just didn’t happen”
• Ubicquia’s sales team spent probably 35% of their time trying to satisfy partner requests. 
• It was anything from,
  • ‘Hey, I need a spec sheet’
  • ‘Hey, I need more information on this’ 
  • ‘How do I find that?’ 
  • ‘What's your warranty?’
• Ubicquia’s field sales team dealt with so much administrative partner management work that regularly bogged them down, that their opportunity to sell was significantly limited. 

After:

• Ubicquia uses Magentrix’s Document Library for posting:
  • Sales enablement resources (e.g. videos, presentations)
  • Marketing resources
  • Technical resources (to help partners manage the customers they’ve brought in. Includes installation guides and various resources partners will need for working with the product)
• Smooth PX: It became easier for partners to find resources they need.
  • “They don't specifically say, ‘Hey, this has changed the way I view you guys.’ They just simply say things like, ‘This is the best portal I've ever seen. This is the best organized. This is the easiest way to find the information. Oh my God, this is so intuitive.’ So they don't give it a Ubicquia flavor, but it's just when they compare us to the other companies that they're doing business with, they absolutely love it.”

• Time-Savings for Internal Sales Team: “This was a way to shift the responsibility for the partner management, the administrative portion of it, to a different place and give them more hours in the day to sell.”

Partner Team Access Management

Before:

Nothing existed

After:

• “This is beautiful. The Partner Team Access Management, the ability to set that tiered structure within the partner’s organization and give the partner the ability to add and delete people from their roster – the feedback that we get is: ‘This is the best portal we have ever seen.’ And I appreciate the compliment.”

Ease of Objective Alignment via Business Planning for Streamlined Partner Operations & Communication

Before: 

• Initially, there were no defined strategic goals set for partners in terms of bringing new opportunities to Ubicquia.
• The previous way was a pretty haphazard process that included a variety of communication methods:
  • Emails and calls
  • Occasional visits
  • Random encounters at trade shows 

After:

• “The other thing that is extremely helpful for us is the business planning module. That gives us the opportunity to document for everybody what we are doing with a particular partner.
  • What are their goals for the quarter? 
  • What are their goals for the year?” 
• Alignment Between Direct & Indirect Teams: “It's a central place that the partner can see and our sales team can see it. So we're all speaking off the same page.”
• Introduced Structure & Goals to Partnerships: The implementation of structured joint business planning helped discipline Ubicquia’s approach to partners – they have transformed the way they pursue partner business.

Partner Awareness via Articles for Streamlined Partner Communications
Before: 

• Lack of partner awareness and time-consuming updates process: “We had an issue where a partner was working off an old price list. When you post something online, they have the opportunity to download it. If they don't come back to check to see if there's a current version, then you've got an issue with version control.” 

After:

• Version control & Updates: As new announcements get posted on the portal, using the Articles module, partners who are opted in will get a notification about the update

Personalizing the PX via Partner Engagement Pages for Increased Partner Engagement

Before:

• It was difficult for Ubicquia to customize how they would communicate with partners.
• Just one PX for all: 
  • Ubicquia was forced to engage in one-to-many communication with partners.
  • Partners found that there was a lot of extraneous information – with Smart Street Lighting Agent partners uninterested in products meant for Grid Agent partners, and vice versa. 
  • And as a result, partners had a poor experience as the information they were receiving wasn’t always relevant to their needs or interests.

After:

• Tailored PX: By implementing a Partner Engagement Page, Ubicquia can tailor information, almost achieving a one-to-one communication level. 
• They plan to refine the portal by establishing unique Engagement Pages for each security role (e.g. an Engagement Page for Smart Street Lighting Agents, an Engagement Page for Smartgrid Agents, etc.)
• Time savings: This approach spares Allen the hassle of navigating and manually sorting through content for different partner types.

Visibility into Partner Engagement via Partner Portal Analytics for Streamlining Partner Operations 

Before:

• Previously, the only partner evaluation method Ubicquia had available to them was solely based on the revenue and pipeline partners generated. 
• They did not conduct business reviews, engage in joint planning, or track literature downloads from the web.
  

After:

• Ubicquia uses analytics to collaborate on identifying and closing business
• Transparency into partner actions:
  “One of the things that I use on a regular basis is going in to see which of our literature is being used the most. I find out that the new stuff that I post generally gets the biggest spike … So the engagement is really good now.”
• Insights for optimized partner enablement and partner marketing efforts:
  Ubicquia now has clear insights into which sales, marketing, and technical resources partners are using.
  • “We know pre-sales is a strong mix of video and spec sheets; we know for post-installation they heavily consume video. We know the product catalog goes mostly unused. And this helps Marketing determines what we need to do more of and what we can take off the list.”
• Analytics helps Ubicquia provide a more tailored PX:
  • Initially, the company's product marketing collateral focused on product descriptions and specifications. 
  • However, after reviewing the partner activity, Allen had some conversations with partners where it was revealed there was a need for changes in how some of Ubicquia’s partner collateral is presented to partners.
    • For example, a popular infographic for Ubicquia’s DTM+ product wasn't usable by partners because it wasn't designed for print. 
  • Now, Ubicquia creates new materials with partner usability in mind and develops specific content for their various verticals.