Brightcove sees the enterprise market as prime for the introduction of legitimate enterprise grade video solutions, and needs an effective channel to more fully penetrate that market.
Lynn D. Tinney, Vice President, Global Partners at Brightcove
Cloud video services provider Brightcove has restructured their Brightcove Global Partner Program. The company, which primarily serves the higher end of the video market, has emphasized simplifying things and aligning them better globally in the new program. They have also introduced a new tier for Master License Partners, who deliver Brightcove as a service.
Brightcove has sold direct historically, but began building out a channel in the last year and a half, leveraging the AWS marketplace, and adding VAR partners as well as marketing agencies and event organizers, who attach Brightcove to their proposals. While they have customers in all parts of the market, most of them are larger, because their solution is more expensive compared to companies like Vimeo, and YouTube who target the SMB space. Much of the enterprise market is still fertile ground for a real enterprise strategy, because Brightcove says that while many enterprises use video today, many of them also don’t have a legitimate enterprise strategy. They are, however, starting to be aware that they should.
“We have found that more and more enterprises are starting to look at how they leverage video,” said Lynn D. Tinney, Vice President, Global Partners at Brightcove. “Video looks easy. You can go to FaceBook and other social media platforms and find quick, easy clips, and can do that off of your phone. And that’s fine for clips and simple things, but if you want to deliver video that’s compelling and ignites engagement and where you can have confidence that it wont fail while delivering to thousands of concurrent viewers with the same quality and ease as Netflix, that is not the time to use a simple delivery method. We’ve been at this a long time, and while it’s hidden behind the curtains, we have mastered the difficulty of pulling this off while making it look simple. It’s time for enterprises to adopt a real video strategy, and that’s why we need the reach of partners to help us.”
Tinney, who came to Brightcove in February 2020, indicated that the program that existed when she arrived had some limitations.
“That program had existed for a couple of years, but we hadn’t built out the infrastructure behind it, so the way it showed up at the field level was different in the U.S. than it was in Europe or in Asia,” Tinney said.
“We changed two things,” she stressed. “First, we made things more consistent with new common denominators so we can scale it, align resources more effectively, and be better at what we deliver. We also simplified it, so that, for example, a partner will understand if they are in Singapore but selling to Vietnam that it’s not a different game.”
The other major change was creating a tier for partners who sell Brightcove as a managed service.
“We delivered a Master License agreement around a managed service for the Brightcove platform,” Tinney indicated. “Partners purchase the license and we are a cost item to deliver the service to the clients. It’s a true managed service model.”
The managed services tier was part of a major rethinking of how the program is organized. The old program was a standard three tier metallic, with Bronze Silver and Platinum partners.
“We took all of that out,” Tinney said. “The program is now organized around types of partners. We have four types: referral; solution; MSP; and Technology partners.” The Technology Partner program, which is an important one for the company, is run by a different group.”
The MSP category will appeal to two types of partners, Tinney said.
“One is partners who are event organizers and marketing consultants, but we also have existing partners who have resold us, but who are now interested in the MSP model for clients who want to be served that way.”
Brightcove has about 100 partners on the books, of which about 30 are ones with whom they work consistently.
“I have no intention of pulling anyone out of the program, although there will be new contracts, which are clearer and more consistent,” Tinney indicated. “We never expected to have tons of partners. We don’t want to overdistribute this.”
Some of the enablement resources, like a deal registration program and marketing tools, are in place now.
“We are also rolling out our portal, and releasing Brightcove Partner University,” Tinney said. “Elements we want to add are our Level One support certification and a professional service certification. One other thing we have announced but don’t have yet is an MDC – a Market Development Credit. We are operationally figuring out how we work that. We don’t have that yet, but are developing it and hope to have it out before the end of the year.”
