Rebuilding from the ground-up

Life is so busy in the networking industry, we don’t often have time to look back and check whether goals have been achieved or not or did we even set the right goals? With Christmas and Easter both out the way we took a break from our dynamic development schedule to do exactly that – look back, and reflect on where we are now, and where we began in 2017.

In early 2017 we decided to challenge the status quo. All vendors have a partner tiering structure of some form or other, but do these traditional programmes really deliver? We set out to ‘build an ecosystem of engaged, loyal, profitable and growing partners’. A challenge in today’s market and no small task.

So, a year on, what have we really done and actually achieved?

No one can deny that we’ve been busy! In the last 12 months alone, we rolled out the new Zyxel Ally Programme (ZAP) in the UK, Ireland, Iberia, Nordics, CEE, DACH, Turkey, Russia and CIS countries. We redesigned our Partner Portal and added 70 pages, in 8 languages, and 450 assets onto this shiny new portal. We answered 760 of your queries and sent 160 emails and multi-lingual newsletters to all of our partners.

Our biggest headache was the partner rewards scheme. Typically these don’t incentivize a partner and similar to any high street loyalty scheme the points expire before you’ve saved enough to do anything with or remembered to take action. We moved to an up-front discount process, involving our 59 EMEA distributors. A simple concept designed in the depths of theory that involved considerable lateral thinking to realise as not all distributors where set-up to manage and support this style claims process. We added more automation, business plans and deal registration. Behind the scenes; we switched our CRM system, adding additional complexity of integration between this and the partner portal, streamlining our two biggest business platforms at the same time - a necessary must.

Why should you care I hear you asking – surely this is all about Zyxel’s business not mine? On the contrary, all of these changes were taken with our partners in mind. We’re trying to make your life easier and to make working with the Zyxel team simpler – we all know vendors can be overly complexed.

Reflecting on our original goals did we achieve loyalty, engagement, growth and profitability? All lofty high level aspirations that can be difficult to measure. Anecdotal feedback has been positive but is this a true measure? 1,675 new partners registered in 12 months. Over 5,500 users logged into our portal over the last year, and visited 300,000 pages and downloaded 23,500 assets.

This is where most organisations pat themselves on the back, goals achieved – moving on to the next project. At Zyxel we have taken a different approach – this programme is like our organizational child. We’ve given it life and supported it through it’s first steps. Now we need to nurture it and this takes continual focus and energy.

In 2018 we are planning to open our programme and portal doors to even more partners in more countries. We will be adding more specialisation and rewards options. At the core of the programme will always be the portal where we will continue to share the latest news and hot assets.

So, join ZAP today to see what the fuss is all about!