CHAMP - Partner Profile

A mentor of mine once shared with me a simple equation:

UR-2B = S

He explained its meaning saying "Strategy (S) is the difference between where you are (UR) and where you want to be (2B)". Cute and simple, perhaps too simple. However it underscores an important point. You can't design a strategy until you clearly understand and agree to two things: current state and future state.

In managing the the CHAMP program at Red Hat, we made documenting current state very straightforward. It included four parts; Plan Information, Partner Profile, Management Summary, Partnership Stakeholders. Each section becomes increasingly more detailed and prepares you and your partner to agree on a mutually beneficial future state. Let's look at each of the four current state parts first.

Plan Information

This part simply aimed to identify this plan as unique to other partner plans here's an example template:

Partner Profile

This gets a bit more in depth and captures the critical business markers of the partner and how they fit within your partner ecosystem. Usually a Partner Account Manager can gather this information without involving the partner.

Management Summary

This provides the key information for your company's partner teams, sponsors and executives to quickly review the alliance. You should include:

• Partnership status to date

• What makes this partner so specific/interesting to your company and vice versa?

• Highlights and lowlights from last fiscal year

• Key wins

• Average deal size

• Describe the partner’s growth strategy (2-year history, projected growth, primary growth strategies, growth rate)

• Describe the partnership fundamentals (reasons for partnership, metrics for success, partnership expectations)

As you can see, this will require you to start working with the partner to understand what's gone well, where improvement is needed and what thier plans and expectations are.

Partnership Stakeholders

Effectively this is a simplified RACI model showing who at each company is the owner and therefore accountable for the different dimensions of the partnership: Offer Development, Marketing, Sales, Implementation or Deployment and Services as well as who they are ultimately accountable to.

With this last tool agreed upon with your partner, the alliance is ready to meet to work through the analysis of the joint value in the strategic alliance and build the execution plan and resource requirements which I'll cover in the next two posts.