Partner enablement: why don’t you seize the opportunity?

Whenever I meet with industry leaders, more and more I’m hearing partner enablement discussed as the defining strategy for the future of wholesale.

The carrier industry has been affected by the fast transformation of our business model. It seems to me that the industry has found a model that leverage their strengths. We are now refocusing our businesses around directly supporting partner success.

Moving away from A to B connectivity and selling voice minutes to a more complex business model means committing to a new approach. We need to invest time and effort in making partner enablement more than a concept in the carrier industry. It is worth the effort as it can create a more stable and healthy business.

Everyone wants to do it but the question is how?

• Understand the Whole Value Chain – From wholesale carrier to service provider to enterprise and end users, we need to have greater visibility and understanding of what success looks like end-to-end. See where you can add value. This means understanding consumer behaviour and what really matters to them

• Leverage Consumer and Enterprise Solutions – The carrier arms of integrated service provider can leverage their consumer and enterprise businesses and turn existing services into wholesale solutions. Video and Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms can be redeveloped into white-label offerings for other service providers. Unified Communications and other enterprise solutions can be packaged for resale in new markets where partners have existing customer relationships

• From Production Design-to-Cash Cycle – Become a proactive element of the production cycle of your client. We can capture new revenue from selling a wider range of services while also growing with partners that win more business

• Add New Talent – Bring new people that have experience serving the entire value chain. Look for new skills sets when building teams. There’s a whole new level of customer nurturing that needs to take place with different types of talent incorporated into the business

• Multiply Training – Your people need to understand partner business models, which is a lot different than sitting across from a partner at a bilateral table. Carriers need to invest in training staff to broaden their scope

Partner enablement leads to sustainable revenue with increased customer satisfaction and stickiness. We can offer long-term support that help our partners to manage change, adapt and grow in a fast-moving market.

It could be a return to more stability in our business. How each carrier executes on its partner enablement strategy will create new competition and an even more dynamic market in the future.

Now: are you ready to seize this opportunity?

What else should be considered when developing partner enablement? Let a comment below.