Growth can be tricky. Technology is supposed to unlock growth, whether you are an end user, reseller, or vendor. If not done thoughtfully, it can unlock unnecessary spending, sprawl, and security risks. It is difficult enough to pick the right partner or vendor and one technology. It can be even trickier picking two or more, but that risk and work come with the reward of magnified results.

Using examples from our last article, let’s stick with our legal offices and insurance business. These companies can benefit from custom-built AI platforms for sales, customer support, and compliance. They will also need an additional security platform to ensure data governance, no data leakage, identity management, and more. Finding the best products together is key, not just loosely coupled with a launch in context but products with a best practice architecture. Finding the right vendors is the same for resellers since it may be “cool” to have the hot products in your resale portfolio, but who are your target customers, and do the products align well with that core consumer or vertical? This goes for vendors as well. Collecting alliance partner logos on a website like a trophy room can seem flashy, but are they a good fit with your product, and is the connection beneficial for both of you, not just for branding but revenue outcome?

Building the right connections to unlock growth is the key for everyone involved. There are a lot of great examples in the industry, and we will be looking at some of them in future discussions, particularly around vendor integrations, what is real, versus one of my favorite industry terms, what is “vaporware.” Remember the key tenants to the force multiplier of partnerships. 1- Does it enhance my business and customer outcomes if I am an end user? 2- Does it enhance my consumer outcomes, which enhances my growth and revenues if I am a reseller? 3- Does a partnership with another vendor not just reflect but protect my brand, and do I have an outcome that benefits both my product and my partner’s product if I am a vendor?

The right connections are just another link in unlocking the next levels of growth. Please reach out to discuss which brands you have seen successfully connect and some that haven’t. In my background, there are a few that I have personally worked on and fostered. I would be glad to discuss what went right, the results, what didn’t, and how it was fixed.