One of the most common pain points we hear from our ecosystem customers when we first meet them is: “We don’t have enough data or insight with our partner enablement to make proper business decisions.” What is most interesting about this concern is that we hear it from some of the largest tech companies in the world who either own, develop, or integrate the most advanced technologies. This raises a compelling question: What is really inhibiting critical data from flowing freely between ecosystem partners?
Before delving into some of the common inhibitors, let me start by describing some major implications of this deficiency. First, partners tend to ignore gaps and throw money into marketing “black holes”, such as Marketing Development Funds (MDF). Unfortunately, because there is not enough data, MDF effectiveness cannot be tracked in terms of enablement return on investment (ROI). Second, they try to base their actions purely on revenue. This means the only insight to enablement success comes at the end of a given tracking period through sales results. Unfortunately, this is often too late in the cycle and does not enable more proactive actions for improving sales. In many cases it leads to contentious partnerships where the vendor argues, “We gave them a ton of MDF and launched the proper enablement through our partner portal, but they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity and the ensuing sales figures were dismal.” The partner counters, “It’s not easy scaling the business with this vendor who is very rigid in their enablement approach.” To overcome this data gap dilemma, some partner teams try to cut corners by exporting spreadsheets and emailing whatever data is available. This is very risky and essentially throws compliance out the window.
But why is data sharing within the context of ecosystem partnerships so complicated? Empirically, we have identified three common causes:
- Expired partner strategies or immature legal frameworks
- Political power haggling
- Complicated and costly integration
In terms of partner strategy, we have noted some organizations that are simply not ready to open up to their partners in ways that allow them to share data more freely. It often is a “take it or leave it” approach—meaning they either share knowledge and data off their own portals or the partner should go seek relationships elsewhere. Others might be less stringent, and would not mind it, but may not be legally mature enough to allow for it—ironically resulting in risky spreadsheets are flowing around.
We also see organizational politics and power haggling as another significant impediment. In many ways, surviving and thriving in large organizations is about information control. Therefore, systems and data become a bargaining chip between business groups (BGs) and leaders competing for influence and resources. The ensuing system “motes” should not be underestimated, especially if overall strategic guidance is missing. The result of competing agendas is partners may get locked out of certain data sharing initiatives simply because a business group or leader stands to lose from ceding such knowledge. To the chagrin of partner teams and partners, some organizations may still witness some uphill battles and drawn-out process.
The good news here is that most organizations we engage with now have aligned their strategies to encompass partner ecosystems, have gotten blessings from their compliance teams, and have tamed their politics. What they are focusing on are the technical challenges.
Technically connecting large organizations to share data should be theoretically pretty easy. But in reality, it is challenging because of the dynamic nature of organizations. It is one thing to deploy a system within a single organization. It is another to connect two systems across exogenous organizations to share knowledge and data. There are implications at the network, security, data, process, and interface/experience layers. This problem is accentuated even more if an organization’s connectivity is to a complex, multilateral, and multi-tier ecosystem.
A common question we often get asked is to what extent can APIs help plug the data gap? APIs can indeed be very helpful, but their strength is in connecting bilateral single-tier organizations. APIs were never engineered to support the data needs of multi-tier complex ecosystems (which happens to be the case with most mid to large modern organizations). For several years now, TIDWIT has been solving this challenge by successfully deploying an Ecosystem Enablement Network to share knowledge and data within complex organizational structures. Essentially, TIDWIT serves as cloud middleware that allows organizations to connect their APIs to a standardized and multilateral environment that delivers knowledge, apps, and data, and helps measures results in a secure and automated manner. TIDWIT’s architecture transforms basic point-to-point APIs into point-to-network connections, saving organizations time, effort, and resources. This not only helps plug any data gaps, delivering data in real time but also provides the ability for comparative benchmarking and predictive analytics from the network, adding artificial intelligence (AI) to what would be flat data file interchange.
Strategically, the net result of ecosystem connectivity is that all data gaps get plugged. Now, partner organizations can clearly see (and in real time) the data to better plan for, monitor, execute, analyze, and adjust their enablement execution strategies. Tactically, an improved level of collaborative transparency builds trust by delivering actionable data that drive partners towards common objectives and results. Ultimately, plugging ecosystem data gaps through the deployment of ecosystem network middleware is conducive to healthier partnerships that are dynamically interconnected and on the same page, all while costing less, scaling more, and empowering stronger shared growth.
