OutSystems’ Ben Yerushalmi on Elevate, agentic AI, and why partner work is moving to the front end

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

My guest today is Benjamin Yerushalmi, senior vice president of partners and alliances at OutSystems, the enterprise low-code and AI development platform. Ben is a three-time CRN channel chief who spent the last decade-plus building partner ecosystems at Salesforce, Automation Anywhere, and now OutSystems – three companies that each represent a different wave of technology transformation, from cloud CRM to intelligent automation to what’s now being called the agentic AI era.

OutSystems recently launched Elevate, a ground-up redesign of its partner program that shifts the incentive model away from volume and toward outcomes, customer satisfaction, and AI credentials. Now, OutSystems may not be a name that’s top of mind for a lot of solution providers in our audience, but the conversation we had touches on questions that are very much in play for every partner right now. What does an agentic AI engagement actually look like from a services standpoint? How is the work shifting from implementation to advisory? And what do you do when a customer asks why they shouldn’t just use a vibe coding tool instead?

Let’s get right into it. My chat with Ben Yerushalmi.

Robert Dutt: Ben, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Ben Yerushalmi: Thank you for having me.

Robert Dutt: The last time we spoke, you were at Automation Anywhere – it was their event in Austin a couple years ago. Before that, you were with Salesforce, now OutSystems. Three very different platforms, but in all of them you’ve been building or revamping a partner ecosystem around a technology wave. What’s the thread that connects those experiences for you? What have you learned about what actually works when you’re asking partners to bet on something, especially when it’s early innings of that particular wave?

Ben Yerushalmi: Great question. It’s interesting, because three very different experiences. When you’re with a company like Salesforce, Salesforce is a juggernaut in a lot of respects. There are a lot of partners who are very invested in your success. They’ve got big business units, big practices, and there’s a clear ROI. Salesforce is creating a lot of demand in the market.

When you’re with a mid-sized software company like Automation Anywhere or OutSystems, the challenge is still the same – you have to present them with a reasonable business case for investing in your technology and then going to market with you. Because you don’t have a shiny blue cloud on your business card, I think it’s a much bigger challenge. You have to do things like build a partner program that’s designed for growth, build a partner program with clear benefits to the partners about how they’re going to lean in, why they’re going to lean in, how they’re going to engage with your brand. It is a slightly different challenge – or a vastly different challenge.

And when you’re with the smaller companies, the need to move fast is so urgent, especially where we are right now in this market with AI impacting everything we do. Messaging is changing, the go-to-market models are changing, the expectations of our customers are changing. Building a program that can be flexible, fast-moving, and built for growth is just super critical.

Robert Dutt: OutSystems has been around for 25 years now, but Elevate feels like a pretty significant rethink of how you engage partners. I suspect your previous answer may have covered some of the territory, but what was broken – or not working well enough – about the old model that made you say, “All right, fresh sheet of paper, let’s do something new here”?

Ben Yerushalmi: Look, nothing was broken. We had a functioning partner program that evolved over time, and none of the iterations it evolved through looked like the market we’re in today. We really needed to take a step back and strategically look at the program, think about what needed to be built in that could move at the pace of the market and give the ecosystem the things it was going to need to grow.

For example, if you look at the old program – big emphasis on new logos, big emphasis on partners that had the implementation skills. Both super important, but only a fraction of how our partner ecosystem adds value to our brand, to our customers, and in the things they do to drive outcomes.

We really had to reposition the program. First, pivot everything toward AI – everything from how we measure financial impact, to how we reward training and enablement, to how we measure CSAT and outcomes. Everything had to shift to AI.

We also had to acknowledge all of the different ways that partners add value. Not just sourcing new logos, but co-sell, resell, managed service, MSP, ISV – and not just new logo acquisition, but growth in our existing accounts. Partners source business in our existing accounts. Partners are the best set of people to go in – especially when they apply their AI expertise, their industry expertise – and really grow our footprint at those accounts and truly drive outcomes and value for our customers. We had to acknowledge that.

We also had to think about what we could build into the program to incent our ecosystem to be thinking about industries, to be thinking about agentic solutions, and to drive that behavior.

Robert Dutt: One of the things that jumps out about Elevate is the shift toward earned levels based on outcomes and customer sat rather than just volume. That’s a trend we’re seeing across the industry. But it does raise the question: does that model inherently favor larger partners who can invest in multiple certifications and have that CSAT infrastructure, or is there a path for smaller partners as well?

Ben Yerushalmi: There is. We have a number of examples of smaller-scale partners that have achieved some of the higher levels in the program. We also have examples of smaller partners who are on path to achieve Elite Delivery Partner status – because it’s not one credential per person. One person can have multiple credentials across the different disciplines. It doesn’t necessarily favor large partners.

Now, when we launch Global Strategic – which would be a tier sitting above Platinum – that may, just because of sheer scale, favor larger partners. That said, our company is going to run on the strength of our Silver partners, our Gold partners. It truly takes partners across all of those levels to build a healthy go-to-market. I’m not terribly concerned about where smaller partners are going to find their place in the program.

The other thing – and I’ve gotten a lot of questions about this – the Premier level in the old program basically maps to Gold in the new program. Platinum is effectively the level above that for partners to strive for.

Robert Dutt: You’ve weighted agentic AI credentials pretty heavily in the point system, for obvious reasons. How are you credentialing something that’s that new and that quickly evolving? What does an agentic AI competency look like for a partner today versus what you expect it to look like a year from now?

Ben Yerushalmi: You tell me what the market’s going to look like a year from now.

What we’re doing right now is putting emphasis on our AI-built components. For example, Agent Workbench is going to carry a higher number of points in the program than O11. ODC is going to have a higher number of points than O11. As we continue to release additional AI-built products, we’ll continue that over-weighting. It’s simple – it’s trying to encourage a behavior.

Staying at pace with the market is a massive challenge. One of the things we need to make sure is that as fast as we’re moving, as fast as our messaging evolves to meet the demands of the market, our partners have to come along with us. Partner enablement is one of the most important things we’re going to do this year – around messaging, around hands-on product enablement on all of the innovation we’re bringing to market. Because we want to encourage partners to go out and get those credentials, we’re putting the weighting in the program. It’s also a faster path to up-leveling within the program. Retooling all of your practitioners is something we need all of our partners to do – it’s a big undertaking.

Robert Dutt: Everyone in the industry is talking about agentic AI. You touched on the role of Agent Workbench and how it’s a core piece for you. Curious what you’re hearing from a partner economics standpoint – when a partner takes on an agentic AI engagement, what does that actually look like? Is it a dev project, a consulting engagement, something that becomes a managed service? What are you seeing as the motion for partners today?

Ben Yerushalmi: That’s a great question. We’ve historically had – maybe a small army, but a really great ecosystem of – partners with strong technical skills that did a really great job of implementing. We were a leader in the low-code space, implementing rapid application development and doing great things for our customers. We had a lot of folks that were really strong on the back end of a project, on the implementation side.

What we’re seeing now with agentic is that there’s a lot more work for partners on the front end – on the design, on the architecture, on thinking through the downstream change management implications, the way agents are going to have to work within the current corporate and IT environment. Just to use the most common example: if you’ve got an agent working alongside humans with humans in the loop, that impacts how an organization functions. You need to be thinking through those things on the early side of these engagements.

So we’re seeing a shift to more work on the front end, because you’re not just thinking about how do I architect the solution and how do I build it – you’re thinking about all of the downstream impact on how an organization functions.

We’re also seeing a lot more experimentation. What can these tools do? What can these agents really do? Our partners are being asked what the best technology is. Our partners are being asked to evaluate us alongside other technologies. We’re seeing competition from all directions, and our partners really need to understand how to sell the value of our platform and handle a lot of the objection handling earlier in the cycle.

Why can’t I just use a vibe coding tool,

for example, versus Mentor or Agent Workbench? We always go back to the platform messaging – if you’re using a vibe coding tool, you’re going to get vibe code. At the end of the day, you still need a platform that takes care of governance, security, privacy, compliance. But our partners are being asked all those questions up front. There’s a lot more advisory that now goes into any level of engagement.

Robert Dutt: Along the same lines but with a slightly different take – where are you seeing partners actually generating revenue with agentic AI today, versus where is it still more of “we see the opportunity, we’re investing, and expect the payoff in a year or so”?

Ben Yerushalmi: Look, I think the end state for a lot of this is envisioning multi-agent systems operating within our customers’ technology and corporate environment. We are starting to see that emerge, and we’re starting to see our partners build multi-agent workflows – not just one-offs. These are starting to look like repeatable solutions, which is really great.

Think about areas like claims processing – that’s one where you see a lot of examples. You’re starting to see people build claims assessment agents, claims orchestration agents, claims adjudication, and these are repeatable solutions. You’re also starting to see a lot of things, especially on consumer-facing apps, where digital agents are handling a lot of the customer interface. Those are things that are repeatable and can be used across industries.

You’re starting to see really interesting things with voice-enabled agents. I listened to a demo just today where it was every bit as good as talking to a human – a natural language conversation, all built on the core components of OutSystems, and it can be used across industries.

You’re also starting to see complex industry use cases. As we go to market in finance, in manufacturing, in public sector, we’re seeing our partners bring repeatable solutions for a joint go-to-market. In addition to the things we’re building, we’re starting to see our partners lean into those industries, bring those repeatable solutions, and color outside the areas where we’re investing so we can cover off other industries. We’re also launching a program within Elevate that contains the framework for industry-focused go-to-market programs.

Robert Dutt: A bit earlier, you mentioned there is a space and a motion for the smaller deep-dive specialist kind of partner to succeed with you. Given that a lot of our audience – especially here in Canada – is smaller solution providers, MSPs, VARs, people who live in the Microsoft ecosystem and serve the mid-market, can you elaborate on what makes for a successful partner for OutSystems in that space? What are the common threads you see, and what do those partners typically get out of it?

Ben Yerushalmi: One of the things we’re seeing is partners investing in getting the Elite Delivery Partner status. Before, we just had Delivery Partner – a fairly low threshold. Now we have the Elite Delivery Partner threshold, which is an indication to our customers that our partners, big and small, know our platform every bit as well as our professional services team. Reaching EDP is something that can be done by large and small partners alike, and that’s where we’re going to tend to recommend partners who have achieved those higher levels. Those are the partners that will likely get subcontracting work from us – that becomes super important.

It also doesn’t take a large partner to invest in an industry solution. You need to be thinking about the demands of the market you want to serve and where you want to make those investments. It doesn’t take a large partner to offer a managed service. Those are all things that drive faster time to market and faster time to value for our customers.

Having a niche in a market where you can sell is also important, because financial impact is a big component of how you level up in the program. We have small to mid-sized partners that have achieved the top tier. You need to be thinking about the buckets of contribution – co-sell, resell, anything adding financial impact, new logos, credentials, CSAT, program track. All of those buckets contain a lot of different areas to earn points for partners that don’t have a giant GSI logo. It was really designed for partners of all sizes.

Silver, Gold, even Bronze partners are adding a ton of value to our customers. Our sellers recognize who they need to align with in a given market. We’re also putting tools in the hands of our PAMs and sellers so they can understand the capability, capacity, and competency of every partner in our ecosystem – who knows how to sell our platform, who has flawless delivery, who has expertise in a given industry or geo or domain – so that we can really arm our sellers with the information they need to align with the right partner.

Robert Dutt: For a partner who’s living in that Microsoft-centric world and has started delivering Power Platform to their customers, what’s the conversation? Is there a both/and at different tiers of the market, or do you see OutSystems occupying a fundamentally different space?

Ben Yerushalmi: Great question. Look, just about everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve competed with Microsoft – I’ve never worked for Microsoft. They’re a great company.

Here, as at Automation Anywhere, the question of how we compete with Microsoft has come up. I think at the end of the day, it’s going to be co-opetition in a lot of ways, because there is room for coexistence at a lot of our customers.

If you step back and look at the competition – from vibe coding tools to a lot of the traditional players – I think where we all converge is around agentic. The Gartner BOAT quadrant – Business Orchestration and Automation Technology – came out about nine months ago. It has the automation players, the low-code players, some of the big ISVs like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Microsoft, and the process orchestration players like Pega and Appian – and where we all converge is around agentic.

I need to be able to compete and win against each one of those players and understand exactly how I’m going to do that. But I also have to understand that in any enterprise architecture, we’re going to need to coexist. We have partnerships with a number of the companies we compete with in that quadrant. I always want to win when we’re going toe to toe, but the right solution for a customer may have one, two, or more of those players in a given solution. There are some great companies in that mix, and we’re going to need to work alongside them.

Robert Dutt: You’ve now built partner programs across cloud CRM, RPA, and low-code/agentic AI – three waves of technology. If you had to tell a solution provider today where to place their bets for the next three to five years in terms of building a practice and generating new service revenue – not necessarily OutSystems-specific, but across the industry – what would you tell them?

Ben Yerushalmi: Flexibility has to be inherent in everything people do. The ability to move at speed and adapt has to be critical. Every company is under pressure to do something with AI – not I think, I know. So people who are investing need to be thinking about skating to where the puck is going.

I woke up too early this morning and was reading the news, and there was a fully AI-enabled humanoid robot at the White House. You see stuff like that and you think, where is all of this headed? But you know there is a world of changing work patterns, a world where AI touches every aspect of everybody’s job. You’ve got to think about the technologies that are going to help companies get to that clearly agentic future. And at OutSystems, we obviously believe we are well positioned to tackle that challenge.

But you also have to think about this: it’s not just having those hands-on keyboard skills anymore. Customers want people who can take them on that journey. They want partners who can help them think about what are the high-value use cases, how are we going to architect that into our existing enterprise architecture, how are we going to build the applications – and then also manage all of the downstream implications and continue to evolve what we’ve built. Because if you look at a lot of the technologies out there today, they’re cool, they’re exciting, but the second you roll them out, you’re creating technical debt. You need to be making bets in platforms that are going to evolve with the market.

Robert Dutt: Last question. A year from now, what does success look like for Elevate? What’s the number or the outcome that tells you this worked?

Ben Yerushalmi: What we rolled out in February was half of the vision. There’s still a lot coming. Working through the roadmap of additional elements to Elevate is going to be really important – everything from how we leverage MDF and rethink that model, to how we rebuild our resell model to promote growth in the market, to continuing to stay ahead of the enablement challenge.

But if I step back – when I originally talked about Elevate, it was about building a program built for growth. As we continue to be a partner-first organization, success looks like seeing partners successful in the program, being able to level up to wherever they want to be contributing, having partners invest in solutions that drive faster time to value for our customers and really help them move into this agentic future, and having our partners clearly driving successful outcomes with AI and agentic for our customers.

At the end of the day, it’s not about Elevate partner program success. It’s really about OutSystems, and OutSystems customer and partner success, that matters. If we can sit quietly in the background and see our partners successful, see us continue to grow, and see our customers realize amazing agentic outcomes on our platform – that’s success. And then I can just sort of ride off into the sunset.

Robert Dutt: Sounds like a plan – although it sounds like you’ve already got phase two well in mind, so I don’t think you’re riding off any time soon. Ben, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Ben Yerushalmi: Thank you.

Robert Dutt: There you have it, Ben Yerushalmi from OutSystems.

I’d like to thank Ben for his time – and I thought it was a pretty candid look at how a vendor thinks about structuring a partner program in a market that’s moving as fast as this one. And I want to thank you for listening, as always.

A few things that stood out for me from this conversation.

First, the shift Ben described from partners doing mostly back-end implementation work to doing a lot more on the front end – design, architecture, change management, helping customers think through how AI agents are actually going to work alongside their people. That’s not unique to OutSystems. If you’re a solution provider building any kind of AI-adjacent practice right now, that front-end advisory is where the value is moving, and it’s a different set of muscles than a lot of partners have built over the years.

Second, his point about the Elite Delivery Partner credential being something an individual can earn – not something that requires organizational scale – was worth paying attention to. As the industry moves toward outcome-based partner programs – and it is, across the board – understanding which programs are genuinely accessible to smaller firms and which just say they are is going to be a real differentiator in where you invest your time.

And third, the convergence point. Ben talked about the Gartner BOAT category putting low-code vendors, automation vendors, process orchestration players, and the big ISVs like Microsoft, Salesforce, and ServiceNow all in the same quadrant. His argument is that agentic AI is the thread that ties them all together. Whether that’s true or just convenient framing, it’s worth thinking about – because wherever you sit in the channel, you’re going to be navigating that convergence whether you planned on it or not.

If you’re enjoying the ChannelBuzz.ca podcast, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories. Ratings and reviews are always appreciated – they do help people find the show. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.