Partners accessing customer data & Analytics
Hello community!
Are XAAS Editors partnering with Channel Partners giving access to data & analytics for free or do Channel partners have to pay fees for accessing these precious customers data & usage information?
Answers
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If you are talking about accessing their customer usage data, there are many reasons why providing them that access might be beneficial for the vendor and improve the customer experience. Perhaps looking at the value of that vs the potential revenue for charging for access might be a good comparison to look at?
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I agree that the usage data is precious - it can help vendors and partners unlock value and help their customers improve their business. As vendors look to their partners to increase customer success, data has to be shared. Here is a great conference presentation by J.B. Wood that describes, among other things, how vendors must help partners excel: https://youtu.be/A_8wD6CfOrY?t=1217
The entire keynote is well worth watching, but that specific link starts at the "Key # 1 - Enable the Winning Partner XaaS Offer Portfolio" slide, notice that the foundation is usage data. J.B. does a great job at setting the vision and goals for vendors and partners in this context.
In general, when considering monetizing data and analytics, we have found that the data and basic reporting isn't necessarily enough. Here is a presentation where we show that leveraging the data to provide benchmarks, predictive, and prescriptive analytic services on top of the data is much likely to lead to successful monetization (i.e. generating revenue):
https://www.tsia.com/conference-presentations/analytics-advantage-monetizing-with-confidence
Is this the case in the context of vendor and partner relationships... I'm also curious to hear from our community.
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@Jeremy Dalletezze thanks for pointing to the recording and the charts. Very insightful. I'm also curious to read more comments what people doing. My experience is in line with @Kirstan Ryan, and on the Education side we're currently moving forward in trying to provide as much insight into data for our Channel Partners as possible. So far it looks for us as if the value creation is big for our Channel and in consequence also for us.
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The answer might differ depending on your business model, but in general I would definitely recommend opening your data to channels/partners under NDA. It should be packaged in such a way that it limits opportunities for those partners to abuse from the data and don't forget they are legal ramifications depending on countries so it is definitely not as simple as just giving full access to your partners.
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Thank you all for all these fast & powerful insights.
@Jeremy Dalletezze thanks for pointing these links, which i've already viewed 2/3 times 😉 and which is really an eye opener! and that's by looking at the video and the fact that data has to be controlled and restricted to avoid abuse like @David Perrault said.
What i'm still unclear is if this has to be given for free as an enabler to channel partners or if the access of the data has to be paid by partners in order to reinforce/emphasis their relation with their Editor.
And if you had some examples of companies doing it like that.
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The first step is to work with your legal department to understand what rights you have to share the data. This is a rapidly evolving area and many companies have contracts with the people and organizations about whom they are gathering data that do not hold up under current law. The law can be quite different across jurisdictions. Sorry to be a killjoy but data rights and privacy are a complex issue.
Once you understand your operating space, look at value flows, taking into account economic, emotional and community value. There are formal approaches to doing this. Include the people and organizations about whom you are gathering data in this analysis.
The value flows are your guide to who you provide data to and how you capture that value. You could capture your share of the value by having the user pay. Or you could get enough value back from providing the data that you don't want to charge and want to encourage use.
There are several reasons why you might charge for this data. (i) People value what they pay for and if you require them to pay for it they may use it more effectively. (ii) They receive far more value from the data than they create for you by how they use the data. (iii) Having them pay for the data makes it easier to enforce your rights and obligations.
This is a rich topic and there is a lot of ongoing research into data monetization best practices.
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Hello @Florent LECLERCQ thank you for asking this important question, and everyone's responses are truly helpful here. I am getting ready to schedule a readout for those who, like Dassault Systemes, who participated in my XaaS Partner Trends and Directions survey, and while crawling through the data, I have found that those companies that are the "pacesetters", i.e., they have reported 40% or greater year-over-year growth in their XaaS offering sales PLUS they have 40% or more of their overall revenue coming from Technology Subscription sales are all either making the telemetry data / adoption data available to the partners that are engaged on those accounts today (60% of the pacesetters) or they are planning to do so in the next 12 months.
Since having this data helps them grow their upsell and cross-sell as well as drives the renewal stream in a timely manner, I doubt they are charging partners for this, but I have not asked them the question. This is something worth exploring certainly, but if it gives its payback in revenue, it is worth making this data available (i.e., has the necessary ROI).
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@Anne McClelland this is very interesting insight. I'm wondering if there is a chance for you to run a quick-poll to get the insight if there is any payment? And if this is possible I'm wondering if you could add the question if anybody experiences challenges with GDPR in passing data from the company to the channel?
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@Alexander Ziegler this is an excellent question (both parts of it). 1) is there any payment from the partners to the vendors for the data, and 2) any issues with GDPR that vendors have seen who have these telemetry systems in place.
Rather than a quick poll to ask it, it would be easier and more efficient for me to follow up with my survey participants in my most recent XaaS Partner Ecosystem trends survey who said that they do share this data with their partners and ask them specifically these 2 questions to gather their insights.
I'll post on this thread after I learn more -
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