While the heavy lifting in restructuring ServiceNow’s partner program was done last year, the company is building on that this year with multiple new enablement initiatives to further empower partners and enhance the partner experience.
David Parsons, ServiceNow’s Senior Vice President of Global Alliances and Channel
A year ago, ServiceNow rolled out a restructured partner program based on the 4 Cs of capacity, capability, competency, customer success, and put it in place over the past year. They also moved from a metallic ‘good-better-best’ tiering system to one modelled on medical practitioner, with the idea being to indicate specialization rather than skill level. The idea was to make partners more involved in co-selling, rather than just implementing, to drive much greater volumes of business. This year, they are building on that further with new enablement tools. These include a new ServiceNow Partner Industry Solutions content library, a Built on Now app monetization framework, and a Now Create extension of their Now Value customer success methodology. These were recently announced at ServiceNow’s Global Partner Ecosystem Summit, part of the company’s virtualized Knowledge 2020 Digital Experience, rolled out over a six week timeframe.
“We are absolutely committed to a $10 billion growth trajectory with and through partners,” said David Parsons, ServiceNow’s Senior Vice President of Global Alliances and Channel. “Pivoting to an industry solutions selling model with and through partners will allow us to deliver maximum business value. It allows us to talk to customers in their industry context and address their unique context to deliver 3x-10x business value. Empowering our partners is our priority this year – enabling innovation and enhancing the partner experience.”
Parsons said that ServiceNow Partner Industry Solutions, which is being announced now, and is scheduled to see solutions be available in the second half of 2020. will play a key role in empowering the partner ecosystem.
“This industry solutions marketplace is entirely new,” he stated. “It is a content library for allowing partners to publish use cases in an industry value context within a standard framework that we established. I built a content validation team to vet these.”
Some of the partners and their solutions have already been identified. Accenture has a telecommunications solution. Atos has a manufacturing quality inspection solution. Deloiitte has two – a bespoke Complaints Management solution for banks and a Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program. DXC Technology, EY, and KPMG have also had solutions vetted for the marketplace.
“We provide this as a service for partners to publish successes in a common framework, which is searchable through our new second generation partner finder,” Parsons said. “The searchable capability will let skills show up very distinctly.”
Subject to their being properly vetted by ServiceNow, Parsons said that as many partner solutions as possible will appear in the marketplace.
“We will not limit the number who get published,” he indicated. “We are maniacal about success stories showing a return, and there are thousands of these sitting on partners’ shelves.”
Another new route to market for partners is the Built on Now program, a new app monetization framework that lets partners build, test, certify, distribute, and sell digital workflows for the Now Platform through the ServiceNow Store, OEM PaaS, and Service Provider channels.
“We have over 500 partners who sell on our store and as an OEM Platform-as-a Service, who want to sell to new logo customers,” Parsons noted. “Built on Now is a new sub-brand which targets any partner who wants to build an application on the NOW platform. It allows customers to go to the ServiceNow store and download an application that the partner has built on our store.”
At the launch, over 70 Built on Now native app solutions are available.
Finally, ServiceNow announced Now Create, a new application which provides customers and partners with step by step guidance to create exceptional business outcomes with the Now Platform through their Now Value customer success methodology.
“Now Value reflects that we are maniacally focused on our 97% renewal rate and not taking anything for granted with our customers,” Parsons said. “Now Value is a new gold standard to codify best practices, which essentially becomes a digital badge for the partner. Now Create becomes a new digital badge, a new accreditation around the co-selling and co-delivery of internal best practices.”
Now Create’s purpose is to provide firm parameters for delivering implementations and upgrades.
“It is a set of delivery guardrails to ensure commitments around business value delivery can be assured,” Parsons indicated. “These Now Create guardrails ensure partners stay on track and don’t overcustomize. They demonstrate to the customer that we did what we said we would.”
Parsons said that further partner enablement along these lines will continue.
“After thousands of implementations, we have learned what world class looks like,” he indicated. “We are now sharing a lot of those methodologies and best practices with our partners as we go forward.”
