June 16, 2022

For those not familiar, a System Integrators (SIs) is a kind of channel partner that audits, leads, and manages improvements to their client’s tech stack. Global System Integrators (GSIs) are SIs with global offices and hundreds of thousands of employees.

Because of their scale, partnering with a GSI is incredibly advantageous for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Done correctly, a GSI partnership becomes the key to scaling your business beyond what it could ever reach with direct sales. However, GSIs are in-demand and can be difficult to partner with.

Examples of GSIs include

A meeting with a GSI could be a pivotal moment for your company and a huge win for your partner program (if it goes well). A partnership with a GSI could mean access to their client companies (who frequently show up on the Fortune Global 500 list). Partnering with a GSI is also a signal to other potential partners, customers, and investors that your ISV is or is becoming a giant in your respective space.

For example, Icelandic carbon-removal tech startup Climeworks partnered with GSI Accenture. The partnership has included:

So how can you prove that you’re a good ISV to work with? And how can you ensure you’ve done the necessary homework before speaking to a GSI?

We chatted with two people with four decades of combined experience both watching and forming partnerships between GSIs and ISVs. In exchange for total candor, we granted each anonymity. One person, whom we’ll call “Casey”, is a managing partner at a GSI while the other, “Riley” serves as a VP at a company with 10,000+ partners in their ecosystem, including both GSIs and ISVs. .

They both shared their perspectives on what they look for in ISVs, what the smartest ISVs are doing, what mistakes ISVs should avoid when trying to partner with a GSI, and revealed some shared truths about ISV/GSI partnerships:

“An ISV might feel jazzed with the relationships that a large SI has and they feel that just being a partner helps them gain access to everything. That is the most naive approach and it doesn’t work,”
Casey told us. “On the other extreme, there could be a whole organization that has been set up [in the ISV] just to ensure that they are productive with the SI. But it is important to understand that an early stage company might not have the bandwidth to create all the homework required to meet the needs of the partnership.”

In order to help ISVs prove that they have substantial value to add to a GSI while also scaling in a manner that’s sustainable, we have translated the feedback from Casey and Riley into actionable things you can highlight when talking to potential GSI partners.

Specifically, ISVs should highlight their own

Let’s explore how to prove your value in each:

An ISV needs to have the mechanisms for scaling already in place before partnering with a GSI. Think of it like a fire. The ISV provides the wood and kindling (the product and scalable workflows) all set up in the firepit and the GSI provides the lighter (their substantial channel and resources).

“The ISV has to have created the predictable sales motion. Nobody else can help scale that. [The ISV/GSI partnership] is not about trying to define the sales motion. That will never work,” Casey told us. “The startup themselves have to define the sales motion, create some predictability, and then the GSI works to amplify that.”

To show that your go-to-market strategy is ready to scale, highlight…

The more replicable channel partner motions you can demonstrate, the more likely a GSI is to feel comfortable partnering with you. “It is important that a software startup understands the mechanics of working through a channel,” Casey told us. “It’s not intuitive. And it’s not automatic. ISVs have to be knowledgeable enough to understand how a partnership with a GSI would work and how it can be made more productive.”

Mention success stories from your other channel partnerships. Do you have testimonials? Case studies? A webinar you can share? The more specific you can get with what your channel partner workflows look like, the easier it will be to convince a GSI that helping you scale those processes is worth their time.

Both Casey and Riley recommended proving that you have the right setup documentation to train the salespeople of the GSI. An ISV needs to have a program that works with the sales channels of their GSI to make them understand the product as it is evolving. How do you communicate with your sales team?
How do you train them on new partnerships? Have you trained a channel partner’s sales team before? This is all important information to bring up in your conversation.

Casey and Riley both look for ISVs who have the resources and bandwidth to scale quickly. “How do you come together as a team to create the most value for the end customer? I think there’s a lot of learning and process involved in this. It’s not just the SI that has to show maturity in this process, but ISV also has to understand these whole dynamics and be ready to invest the bandwidth and the resources towards making that successful.”

One way to do this is by sharing your org chart. Highlight the roles you already have in place to take on partner-specific lifts. Explain how your current team is ready to scale should you partner with the GSI or outline your plans for expanding the team should the partnership come to fruition.

Like any good partnership, there needs to be alignment between the two partners’ business strategies. Without that alignment, there is little appeal for GSIs to invest in helping the ISV scale.

Therefore, an ISV needs to prove that there’s strong business strategy alignment between the ISV and GSI. And according to both Casey and Riley, there are two primary factors behind proving initial business strategy alignment:

Casey and Riley noted that most ISVs use the words “innovative” and “product market fit” without much actual evidence to back it up. Instead of reducing them to buzzwords, prioritize showing the innovation and product market fit behind your business strategy.

To prove business strategy alignment, you should…

The more advanced your decision-making process, the stronger the likelihood you have of a GSI wanting to partner with you.

“The whole process around working on a deal together can be fraught with a lot of emotions on the ground,” Casey told us. “[There can be tension in] deciding who has access to the customer and who doesn’t and what sort of messages can we take to the customer.”

An ISV/GSI partnership is a slow burn, with no immediate payoff. “The expectation should not be such that just because you have a partnership you will see that partnership being productive and adding dollars to your revenue base immediately,” Casey said. Leaders that are impatient and expect results within a few months of beginning a partnership might become frustrated and difficult to work with. A mature leader will take the opportunity early on to set expectations around the timeline. If your ISV only has the resources to sustain a partnership for, say, six months without a return, it’s the responsibility of your leader(s) to communicate that and ultimately decide whether or not you are ready to partner with a GSI.

A mature leader also shows persistence and strong communication skills: “An ISV needs to invest time resources and bandwidth to help educate the sales channel and be persistent with it before they find results. I think that sort of expectation is very critical. Otherwise, there will be a lot of false starts and false stops as well.”

In other words, GSIs want to work with leaders who are experienced in managing large-scale, long-running partnerships.

To prove that you or your leaders are up to the task, mention…