Zebra Announcing Details Of New Partner Program At Global Partner Summit
Shortly after Zebra Technologies’ acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ Enterprise business about a year ago, the two channel teams began work on how to best support their partners. The company organized advisory councils made up of Zebra partners, Motorola partners — or partners of both — and asked what their views were on the perceived benefits and risks of the acquisition, how they executed programs in the field, and what they were looking for in a channel program — or programs. Juliann Larimer, Zebra Technologies’ chief marketing officer, adds, “And we got a lot of questions.”
Zebra developed a single, new, integrated channel program with feedback from the advisory councils, including one message from partners, loud and clear, “Don’t make it harder. Make it easier.” Larimer says partners also stressed they wanted clarity as soon as possible regarding the program’s structure and strategy. Details of the new channel program will be among announcements at Zebra’s Global Partner Summit May 3-5 in Las Vegas.
Zebra made integrating the sales organizations of both companies a priority, enabling partners to work with a single sales manager. In addition, the company recently re-launched zebra.com; customers and partners are no longer rerouted to the Motorola Solutions website. To help partners stay connected, zebra.com is optimized for mobile devices, and the company added click-to-chat functionality.
The Global Partner Summit agenda will also include information on the company’s portfolio and initiatives for 2015, including solutions in the category of “Enterprise Asset Intelligence” driven by three trends: Internet of Things, cloud, and mobility. Larimer explains these are solutions that transform the physical to digital for faster and better decision making.
An example is Zebra’s solution used by the NFL. Sensors in shoulder pads and helmets track players and, using Zebra’s hardware, software, analytics, and services, provide coaches — and fantasy football statisticians — with information. Another example is a bar code solution used to track packages, helping reduce the number of packages routed by hand during the 2013 holiday season from 23 percent to 2 percent in 2014 — with fewer errors and fewer late deliveries.
Solutions providers may already be accustomed to providing Enterprise Asset Intelligence solutions — and Zebra is working to channel-enable its solutions to help partners expand their offerings of this type.
Another of Zebra’s initiatives for 2015 is to build its ISV ecosystem — driven in part by industry migrating from Microsoft Windows to Android OS for rugged mobile devices. To accomplish this goal, Zebra will continue to hold developer conferences by region for the ISV community to meet with channel partners, and host the Launchpad Developer Community online for developers writing to the Zebra portfolio. In addition, recognizing the needs of partners serving specific verticals — transportation, manufacturing, healthcare — Zebra is looking 6 to 36 months ahead to determine which applications partners to work with to meet the needs of those markets.
Larimer adds as Zebra co-invests with partners to develop solutions with ISVs, the company will make solutions from those projects available to other channel partners.