Who do you partner with?  We partner with all our technical vendors and we have been very purposeful and selective with whom we align ourselves.   When selecting a  vendor we take the  approach that says we want to find a vendor that is going to be a strategic business partner not just someone to supply us a piece of hardware or software.  We have done this with all our vendors but I would say the deepest relationships are with HP, Microsoft, Cisco, and Ingram Micro.  For the purposes of today’s article, I will focus predominantly on our relationship with Microsoft.

Why it was worth the time to develop the relationship?    As I mentioned above, we are looking for strategic business partners in our vendors.  The hardware or software that we buy from our vendors is really just a small piece of the puzzle.  We are really looking for vendors who produce a great product be also offer quality technical support, training on new products, and sales and marketing resources.  These are all things that we think our vendors, including Microsoft, do very well. When you aggregate all these benefits that are available,  it becomes very compelling to invest the time to develop these relationships. 

Did it impact your business bottom line/improve customer service?   There are many benefits to the bottom line when it comes to partnering.  There are the obvious benefits associated with the partner program such as internal use licensing and free technical support cases that are available to partners.  There are other benefits that take the form of technical and sales training, co-branded marketing efforts, marketing dollars to plan and execute campaigns and events, access to the Microsoft Across America Truck, and the list goes on! 

Why you would recommend other partners to develop close ties.   Navigating the partner channel is nearly impossible if you try to go it alone.  Developing deep relationships within Microsoft will help you know what programs and benefits are available to you.  Most of these benefits are available to you today at no charge!  Many partners don’t take advantage of the benefits that are available to them and by doing so are leaving dollars on the table.  Your vendors want you to partner and they reward the partners that choose to participate.

Any particular success story or additional comments you would like to make:  We just got done sponsoring a technology event in conjunction with our local chamber of commerce.  Through support from our vendors we were able to bring a tremendous amount of technical resources to the table that would otherwise be unavailable in Central Nebraska.  For example, we requested the Microsoft MSAM Truck through Microsoft Partner Events and were successful in bringing this huge attraction to the tech expo.  Having the MSAM at the event was of great benefit to Intellicom as it let our customers and prospects know that we have a deep relationship with our vendors and introduced them to emerging technology.  In addition, we were able to request a speaker from Microsoft to come out and present at the tech expo on Server 2008 and Vista.  The speaker was great and we had over 60 current customers and prospects sit in on the Server 2008 demo which helped us create interest in the latest build of Server prior to the public launch.  The best things about these examples, are that they were both available to Intellicom, free of charge, through the partner program!