From Partner Management to Partner Orchestration: A New Era for CSPs

The technology and telecommunications industry are evolving fast, and so are the demands placed on Communications Service Providers (CSPs). The era where a CSP might rely on a handful of carefully managed relationships is fading. In its place, a new ecosystem-based approach is emerging, driven by the need to offer customers an experience or solutions vs products and services at a faster pace and scale. CSPs now are collaborating with a growing number of partners to support their customers’ expectations, leading to growing pressure on IT divisions to provide a robust solution that can automate and streamline partner management. Partner Orchestration is a next-generation partner management solution designed to revolutionize how CSPs collaborate with their partner ecosystems. 

Partner Ecosystem Evolution: A Case for Change  

According to an Omdia report, 98% of CSPs believe that collaborating with a broader network of partners is essential for them to stay competitive. Partnerships help CSPs to create comprehensive offerings that go beyond traditional telecommunications services.  

Embracing a partner ecosystem not only enables CSPs to diversify revenue streams and capture a larger share of the customer wallet, but will also enhance customer loyalty, meet cost optimization goals, and improve time-to-market. 

The Partner Management Conundrum 

Unlocking the potential of a partner ecosystem requires CSPs to have the right IT capabilities. Traditionally, partner management solutions were designed to facilitate linear relationships between CSPs and a vendor or CSPs and a reseller. As CSPs expand their partner networks, existing systems of partner management can quickly become outdated.  

According to a recent report, over 70% of CSPs face significant challenges in onboarding new partners, with manual processes and disparate systems leading to delays and inefficiencies. As CSPs sought to grow their partner networks, they encountered several significant challenges: 

• Complex Onboarding: CSPs often rely on outdated onboarding processes. This complexity leads to delays and operational inefficiencies. 
• Limited Communication Tools: As partner networks expand, communication gaps become more pronounced, affecting collaboration and partner engagement. 
• Inconsistent Commercial Models: Traditional partner management often lacks flexibility, making it difficult to adapt to diverse commercial arrangements.  

This complexity can hamper growth and innovation, affecting both the CSPs and their partners. Countering these limitations requires a new approach to partner management.  

The Fundamentals of Partner Orchestration   

There’s a clear demand for a solution that helps to optimize partner management, eliminate redundant siloes and consolidate partners onto a unified platform, serving as a transformative catalyst for the industry. This new system must support two main principles:   

1. Scale: Typically, CSPs start out by working with around 5-7 partners, all managed manually using spreadsheets. Today more CSP reports to need to manage and orchestrate 100s, or even 1000s, of partners which requires a new level of automation.  
2. Diversity of partners and partnerships: The relevant solutions should support seamless collaboration across diverse types and size of partners including solutions partners, go-to-market channel partners, resellers, Hyperscale, start-ups, network providers, other CSPs and many more. They should also support diverse models of partnerships from resellers and vendors to B2B2X, multi-party solutions and selling with your customers.  

The days of traditional partner management are numbered, replaced by a more dynamic and scalable solution: Partner Orchestration. 

Introducing our Partner Orchestration Solution - revolutionizing partner management for scalable growth 

In response, we have launched our Partner Orchestration Solution, a new zero-touch, SaaS-based offering. It is designed to simplify the complexities of partner collaboration by automating workflows to deliver efficiency and scalability over a unified platform. 

Partner Orchestration provides a central command center for coordinating onboarding, interactions, data sharing, processes, and transactions among diverse partners. This zero-touch approach minimizes manual efforts and maximizes automation, allowing CSPs to scale their partner networks efficiently. Here are some key features that make Partner Orchestration an essential tool: 

• AI-Powered Insights: Partner Orchestration integrates analytics and AI-driven insights, enabling CSPs to make faster, more informed decisions. This data-driven approach helps identify new partnership opportunities and optimize existing relationships for growth. 
• Unified Product Catalogue: By centralizing product catalogues across all partners, Partner Orchestration ensures consistency and accuracy, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction. This unified approach reduces administrative overhead and fosters greater collaboration. 
• A partner-friendly environment: This empowers partners to self-onboard their offers and efficiently manage their services and products, helping to increase their engagement and productivity, leading to faster time-to-market for new offerings and overall enhanced satisfaction. 
• The flexibility to support any commercial model: Enabling businesses to adapt to diverse partner preferences and market demands, fostering stronger partnerships and revenue growth. 
• Minimizing administrative burden: Automated task allocation and management empowers partners to handle routine tasks independently, freeing up time to focus on core business activities and strategic initiatives, ultimately driving business growth. 

Conclusion 

The shift from linear partnerships to ecosystem partnerships is driving CSPs to embrace new solutions that offer scalability, flexibility, and automation. Partner Orchestration provides the tools needed to navigate this new era of collaboration, allowing CSPs to optimize partner management and drive business growth. 

Traditional partner management solutions are no longer sufficient for CSPs looking to stay competitive. Partner Orchestration offers a comprehensive approach, supporting CSPs as they diversify revenue streams, enhance customer loyalty, and improve time-to-market. By leaving traditional partner management behind and adopting Partner Orchestration, CSPs can position themselves at the forefront of the industry, ready to meet the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. 

This shift is driving CSPs to rethink their partner management strategies and adopt Partner Orchestration, a solution that can handle the growing complexity and scale of modern ecosystems. 

Real-World Success Stories 

The impact of Partner Orchestration is best illustrated through real-world examples: 

• BSS Modernization: A CSP with outdated BSS solutions faced complex partner integrations, limiting service options. By implementing Partner Orchestration, the CSP streamlined onboarding and automated the sell, fulfill, and settlement processes across third parties. This modernization led to an expanded service selection and freed up resources for innovation. 
• IoT Marketplace: A technology company used Partner Orchestration to launch an IoT marketplace. This platform facilitated the rapid integration of partner offerings, reducing onboarding complexities. The simplified process and centralized platform reduced time-to-market, leading to higher customer adoption of IoT solutions. 
• Multi-country operations: A leading CSP that aimed to create a multi-country B2B marketplace found that Partner Orchestration allowed the company to rapidly onboard partners across geographies. As a result, the CSP increased its offerings and accelerated time-to-market, enhancing its competitive position. 

To find out more about how Beyond Now is helping CSPs to transform into partner ecosystem orchestrators, please visit: https://www.beyondnow.com/en/our-platforms/digital-business-platform/partner-orchestration/

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