Last week, the company brought together its partners in London to share detail on the new partner programme and upcoming products.
Lee Wade, CEO and founder of Exponential-e, explained how the company drives organic growth using its “fish tank model”. The company comes up with one or two innovations every year, always steering clear of commodity services.
He said if you find yourself swimming with competitors that are all offering similar solutions to you, you need to jump into a new fish tank where you’re the first to market with something new.
Once you’ve made that leap, Wade explained, “you will have a time-limited monopoly position, where the market will support margins of 30, 40 or 50 per cent because you are the only player”.
He added how long you can swim in the new fish tank depends on the velocity of innovation, as your competitors will work out how to offer your solutions. Once competitors arrive, your margins will be driven down until you need to find something new.
Next, Liam Montague, head of channel, Exponential-e, shared the company’s channel vision and commitments. He said there are five key elements of the company’s new channel partner programme. These are:
- Strategic collaboration to achieve collective objectives
- Enabling partners with innovative solutions to simplify the supply chain
- Collective capabilities
- Resource-rich approach from marketing and bid support, through to delivery
- World-class platinum service
Montague explained that, in the new model, every partner is platinum. He said, “We don’t do gold, silver or bronze. We believe in offering a world-class platinum service to every single partner.”
The EXPO.e channel community, Montague said, is designed to keep channel companies profitable and thriving both today and into the future.
He said, “We’ve always had a real blend of partners in our community. We have resellers, MSPs, referral partners, carrier partners. Every partner is platinum. And we need to make sure we keep the flexibility to keep partners on our journey. To do that, we need to make sure we’re approachable, adaptable, and accountable.”
Wade also gave a preview of a new offering that will launch next month. He said, “ServiceNow-as-a-service – that is the strapline. Say those words to a CIO or an IT director, and they will walk away in disbelief. They think there is no such thing. But this is our latest fish tank.
“We’re the only company in the world that has got this. And we’ve already sold three of them eventhough it’s not on our website and we’ve not publicised it. We’ve not told the world – although we are today.”
Wade said he does use the phrase “it sells itself” lightly, but this is true of ServiceNow-as-a-service. He added, “You say those words to the right person – a CIO or an IT director – and they want ServiceNow, but their boards won’t sign off the Capex. An Opex model is a completely different story.”