The program adds new tiers for GSIs, ISVs and OEMs, to move beyond the original VAR partner base and deepen the enterprise focus, and also enhances partner benefits across the board.
Barb Huelskamp, senior vice president of global partners and alliances at Alteryx
Analytics automation company Alteryx has announced a major revamp of its partner program, the latest stage in its move over the last two years to deepen their enterprise presence through a partner-led model. The program adds new tiers for enterprise-focused partner types like GSIs, ISVs and OEMs, and makes more resources available in the form of enhanced partner benefits.
The company that became Alteryx was originally founded 1997, and worked in an adjacency of what it does now. In 2010 they renamed the company after their product, a low code analytics and data science platform
“Think of us as an analytics automation company, that makes analytics, data science and business processes easy to use, which provide self service capabilities, and which makes it easy for a knowledge worker can leverage,” said Barb Huelskamp, senior vice president of global partners and alliances at Alteryx.
Alteryx sells into a broad variety of markets from the enterprise down through the SMB, although they now have a focus on increasing their enterprise business.
“Our customers tend to use us for specific use cases, and we sell into all segments from large strategic all the way down to SMB,” Huelskamp said. “They also tend to use us for automation analytics across diverse systems. We don’t really compete with others. We are more for orchestration.”
The changes to the channel program are the latest development in a major restructuring of the company that began in 2020 and 2021. Pretty much the whole of the C suite has been replaced, with the co-founder and CEO moving to the Chairman role and a Board member, Mark Anderson, moving up to the CEO and remaining in that post. Suresh Vittal came in from Adobe to be chief product officer. Longtime Cisco exec Paula Hansen was hired as CRO, and just had the President title added. Keith Pearce came from Genesys as chief marketing officer. Huelskamp is one of the new arrivals, coming in September 2021 from AWS
“We brought in new leadership, with people coming in from larger organizations with best practices which focused on a partner-led strategy,” she said. “We made multiple acquisitions. Our own Go-To-Market team focused on enterprise wide selling instead of at the developer level, as we did before.”
Restructuring the channel program was a key part of this transition.
“We had a channel program before but it only addressed one type of partner, the VARs, and by extension, distributors,” Huelskamp said. “In addition, partners lacked early access to benefits, and the program was segmented by country, which could impact how a global partner accessed the program and its resources. We needed a more diverse global partner community, so needed to modernize our program strategy, in particular to address all partner types – GSIs, technology partners and OEMs, as well as resellers and distributors.
Huelskamp said this is part of a stepping up of the company’s investment in partners, which started around 2013, has grown consistently since 2016, and now numbers into the hundreds.
“We recognize that partners have deep broad customer experience,” she said. They drive cloud and business transformation, so it’s a natural match. Partners are also interested in strengthening their value-add and professional services, and we are not looking to compete with them there.”
In the new program the four partner tracks are very different.
“When we built these tiers, we focused on what the partner journey looks like for each, with the result that it is very different between types,” Huelskamp said. “We already have a substantial population of partners in each category today, including PWC at the highest level in the GSI track and Snowflake in the technology partner category. We believe we will continue to attract new partners across the new partner types in the program.”
The nomenclature of the tiers has changed as well, from the former Associate, Preferred, and Premier tiers to Registered, Select, and Premier tiers.
“Registered indicates that they have just registered interest,” Huelskamp said. Select means that we have selected each other, so there are more benefits like more NFR licenses. Premier partners are the ones who are highly aligned with us.
Likely more significant to partners than the name change is the change in how benefits now work.
“We have added progressive benefits, in which for every investment they make we provide them with a reciprocal benefit,” Huelskamp said. “That compares to before, where they would first have to do a bunch of things, and then get tier benefits all at once. Now, you earn as you do.”
Standard discounts have also been increased across the board.
“These are at every level, not just for the more committed partners,” Huelskamp indicated. “As soon as the partner has demonstrated commitment, they do progress up with highest discounts. We also established unique MDF fund, and we added this year a higher discount if they bring in a new customer
Benefits and requirements are also now segmented regionally rather than at country levels.
“Canada, which is part of the North American pricing structure, did not have a separate structure before, either, and what I’ve seen since earlier last year is that sales of partner-attached and partner-led in Canada,” Huelskamp said. “We have had separate regions for North America, EMEA, APJ and LATAM, but the latter two were more by countries and they are the ones most affected by these changes.” An official set of Global Rules of Engagement, by partner type, has been released with best practices that will help partners optimize results within the program.
Other changes include a new role-based training curriculum and certification system for partners.
“This is based on the new role-based training that we established internally, Huelskamp noted. “We also now have a professional services branding program.”
Huelskamp concluded with three principal takeaways for partners.
“First, 2022 is the year of the partner,” she said. “We are committed to continue our partner-first breakthrough. Second, the program has been modernized to address all partner types. Third, our analytics tissue has become connected tissue, allowing partners to transform processes and business outcomes.”
