Do UIC Digital hold the answer to the partnership challenge?
Spoiler Alert: We believe we do
It doesn’t seem possible that, as I’m writing this, we are at the end of February – only 10 months until Christmas!
2023 was a year of definitive change for UI Centric, from our rebranding to UIC Digital, reflecting our evolved and broadened services significantly better, the growth and strengthening of our business development team with the appointment of Luke Boyle as CGO (Chief Growth Officer), the appointment of James Reeve as Executive Director of Design providing a cohesive connection between the Design team, their services and the commercial team, all the way through to the re-envisioning of our partnership channel and approach.
All significant steps in the overall consolidation of an already strong team and business.
The re-envisioning of our partnership programme and approach saw us building extensively upon our partnership channel, listening to feedback and undertaking some subtle, and some not so subtle, strategic changes, in particular these were around:
- Clearly defining our re-envisioned ‘proactive partnership approach’.
- Iteratively testing and refining the approach, with a small defined group of partner companies.
- Re-articulating our market positioning.
- Building upon both our existing and new partner relationships.
Despite the overwhelmingly positive reception and subsequent success of these changes, our approach wasn’t accepted by everyone we spoke to, with a small number of companies either:
- Choosing to continue to focus on their legacy, reactive style partnership methodology.
- Or, in some unfortunate circumstances, both effectively and practically making their partnership channel redundant.
We have seen first-hand, particularly in complex environments such as media & broadcast and digital transformation, that partnership channels are facing a real challenge in making themselves fit-for-purpose. This problem is not uncommon in circumstances where points of differentiation between multiple suppliers of often similar products are often very subtle!
These complex eco-systems typically consist of a diverse combination of products, development, and integration services. The reseller/reactive partnership approach just doesn’t fit well with these multifaceted environments; typically proving difficult, often verging on impossible, to quantify or forecast – in short they lack the key business prerequisites, predictability and scalability.
Waiting for a partner to close a deal and include your services or products as part and parcel of that negotiation has too many variables:
- Which other partners are involved?
- Is your solution the best fit for the specific circumstances?
- Is there already an incumbent supplier?
- What’s the engaged partners relationship and reputation with the prospect/client?
- Do they feel that their message is diluted when they try and introduce a 3rd party supplier?
Both individually and collectively, these things, and others, are outside of your direct control as a passive partner! Therefore, from a business perspective, it’s easy to see how, under these circumstances, that the partnership channel is neither foreseeable nor accountable.
What makes our proactive partnership approach different, one that is going answer these issues of predictability, scalability and accountability?
In short it is because our approach leverages the correlation between relationships, sales, business development, marketing, and partnerships; four business areas that, although logically linked, so often operate, at least partially, within their own silos. The UIC Digital partnership approach is designed to address the specific challenges and bring together all four areas into creating a cohesive, strengthened, and hence more easily differentiated offering.
To find out more about how we’re changing the view and value of the partnership channel within a sales focused growth environment, and to discuss being part of the UIC Digital Partnership Programme, please drop me an email and we can have a coffee and explore the concept further.
