Riverbed Technology announced today that rather than forcing partners to jump through multiple certification hoops to attain the privilege to resell the company’s hardware and software, it is revamping the Riverbed channel program in a way that rewards partners primarily on performance.
Like many channel programs, the existing Riverbed channel program primarily rewards to certifications attained. The approach, however, puts an undue burden on the partners to make substantial upfront investments, says Bridget Bisnette, vice president of global channels and commercial sales for Riverbed.
The Riverbed Rise channel program announced today will reward partners based on performance and is tied to both revenue and the amount of profit generated. This less rigid approach doesn’t require the partner to invest in certifications unless the partner determines the knowledge associated with gaining a certification adds value to their business, says Bisnette.
Bisnette says channel partners are sophisticated enough now to make their own investment decisions without Riverbed needing to force them down a specific path.
“It’s a less prescriptive approach,” says Bisnette. “It’s going to be a trust-based relationship.”
Bisnette says a new approach to managing the channel is required because the number of business models that channel partners are employing has multiplied. Most channel partners are functioning as resellers, managed service providers, and integrators. As such, they need to be able to exercise more control over when are where they are making operational, versus capital, investments, says Bisnette.
As a result of these changes, Bisnette says Riverbed is forecasting that many partners will see a 10 to 15 percent gain in sales productivity simply because they won’t need to focus so much on attaining and managing certifications.
Channel partners have long had a love-hate relationship with certifications. They like to idea of being identified as having more expertise than other partners in a certain area. But vendors don’t typically put much effort into helping end customers identify partners that have attained, for example, a gold level certification. Vendors do tend to give partners additional rebates and discounts for attaining those certifications. But most of those benefits often wind up being passed through to the end customer to secure the business in the face of intense competition from rival companies participating in the same channel program. The result winds up being a significant investment on the part of the partner that is not often easily recouped. Worse yet, some vendors have tended to view certifications as another profit-center within their business, which can leave partners suspicious of the motives behind creating a certification in the first place.
It remains to be seen what will become of certification-based channel programs. But the one thing that is for sure is there continues to be a lot of room for improvement.
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