Ivanti is developing a unified partner program that will merge its own channel with those of MobileIron and Pulse Secure, two of the vendor’s biggest and most recent acquisitions.
The new program, which is scheduled to roll out mid-year, will arm partners to cross-sell all of the products in Ivanti’s growing lineup of IT management and security solutions.
“By July 1, we’re going to have everything in place that will allow them to effectively sell across the portfolio,” says Erik Randles, senior vice president of global channels and alliances at Ivanti, who stepped into that role last month.
The new program will emphasize consistency with familiar tools and processes wherever possible, he continues. “We actually have an initiative internally that is focused around minimizing disruption to the channel partners, because they’re actively engaging with us to identify and close new business and we want to make sure that we’re not distracting them from doing that effectively.”
The program that debuts this summer will be just a down payment, he adds, on a larger, longer-term vision. Automation functionality powered by Ivanti’s own Neurons platform, for example, is set to arrive in the future.
“We’re looking to incorporate our own technology and solutions into this program so that we have the ability to be best in class in terms of self-service on some of those more repetitive tasks and questions the partners have,” Randles explains.
Ivanti will redeploy the money that automation frees up toward efforts aimed at maximizing the loyalty and effectiveness of the vendor’s top-tier resellers. “We want to increase the investment and make those partners that are committed and invested in Ivanti more successful,” Randles says.
Enabling consolidated, cross-brand management of Ivanti products will be another ongoing priority for the new partner program.
“One of the things that we’re hearing from customers and partners alike is that they want to be able to manage that experience in a very simple and comprehensive way, because in doing so through that integration and single pane of glass management capabilities, you’re actually helping the customer and the partner deliver value, not only in terms of the technology but also the operational cost of the business,” Randles says.
Though partners are always wary of change, he notes, many have expressed strong interest in having one place to go for everything they need to sell Ivanti, MobileIron, and Pulse Secure systems.
“They don’t want to be navigating across different partner programs and agreements, systems, and tools in order to quote, and to sell and to deliver a combined and integrated solution,” Randles says.
Building the new company-wide partner program is one of three focus areas for Randles in his new role. Introducing sales and technical enablement materials that help partners master a wider cross-section of Ivanti’s expanding product catalog is another.
“When you’re with a company like Ivanti that’s moving and growing very quickly through acquisition, there are always more and more products that we need to train and enable partners to sell,” Randles says.
