Swati Moran: The Five Pillars of Modern Partner Programs

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Yeah, okay, it's what is it? Tuesday morning. It's Tuesday morning. We've been here since Sunday, so it's not it's kind of hard to figure out which day it is, actually. But Tuesday morning and we're here, things are just starting to get winding back up again for the for the day. And I'm so excited to be here with Swati. Moran Swati is with stripe, and newly with stripe, well, nine months, maybe almost a year. Yeah, that's amazing. And Swati is go to market partner program leader for for stripe, and, gosh, you have the chops for partner programs. I mean, Swati launched. Was with IBM for how many? 12 years, 1213, years longer. I

Swati Moran  0:44  
was in partner programs almost three years and at IBM, 19 years. 19

Chip Rodgers  0:49  
years. Yeah, so I under soldier 19 years at IBM and you launched the partner World program like three, two or three years ago. Three

Swati Moran  0:59  
years ago, it was a transformation into Bill service, sell competencies really headed towards the market, and now here we are with stripe, which super excited to share some of the innovations and transformations there as well. Yeah. I

Chip Rodgers  1:15  
mean, that was that. I remember that launch. It was a huge launch for IBM, and you were the, you were the puppet master behind it all. So, so that was so congrats on that and and excited that you're at stripe now and working for Dorothy and and, and so tell me a little bit about partner programs. What? What does that mean, what is the partnering strategy for stripe? And maybe some of the differences you're seeing, you know, coming from IBM, and what does that all mean?

Swati Moran  1:49  
Yeah, it's a great question chip. So in terms of stripe, stripe is a financial infrastructure company. Our mission is to grow the GDP of the internet, and we have millions of companies that are customers of stripe, which means we have to have a great partner program. And we have our partnering strategy is several fold. So we have partners that implement stripe, so services, partners, they also do advisory services. We have partners who build apps and integration with our Apps marketplace. We have technology partners, the large guys to the mid to small, who build solutions with stripe. And last but not least is embedded payments partners who are the bread and butter of our ecosystem. They take payments and they embed it into their platform, which they serve to their downstream users. So a lot of business models, but I would say, like, differences between IBM, like, if you look at Bill service, sell, it's a similar notion of partner activities that they're doing, and our program is headed towards those kinds of activities. Like, I'm doing services. I'm building apps. So there's an Apps track, I'm embedding payments. I'm building technology. So it's more suited towards stripe ecosystem. But if you look at the principles, it's not about types of partners, it's about the activities of partners. And partners can participate in multiple tracks. So we see partners who are building platforms and apps, partners who are doing services and apps. So it increases their opportunity to grow with stripe, giving them flexibility across those tracks. And the tracks are all about the benefits suited for those business models. So I would say I borrowed my concepts, but applied to the SaaS companies of the world. And if you can scale an IBM program, guess what? You can scale a startup program like Stripe two, and look at what like end end looks like. So I would say similar applications, but building from scratch.

Chip Rodgers  3:54  
So I love that concept that it's that the because, you know today that is so much. The case is, people are partners. Are not in neat silos anymore, right? I mean, they're doing a lot of different things, so it's really more like, like you said, it's more about capabilities and how you're they happen to be engaged, you know, in this, you know, part of their go to market together, 100%

Swati Moran  4:17  
100% and so I'm excited about building our program. And, you know, can talk a little bit about what good partner programs look like,

Chip Rodgers  4:27  
too. I would love to hear that's a great topic, so that a lot of what you know is happening here at catalyst also is like, what does a great partner program, partner leader look like? What does a great partner program look like? So you're as a master in partner programs. What would be, you know, what do you what do you think? Swati,

Swati Moran  4:44  
so this is a super loaded question, and you we could address this several ways, but I have buckets, right? Like, if I look at my learnings from not just partner programs, but other roles that I've done in my career and great partner programs, I would like bucket into five categories. I. Yeah, the first one being be targeted in your program, be focused in your program, and that means having good partner profiles for what that persona of partner looks like, and what is it that they're doing, and how are you going to help serve their needs? So being very focused, that's number one. Number two is having great enablement, because that's going to empower your partner to be successful in your ecosystem. That could be things like training. It could be certifications, it could be sales enablement, right? Like, how does a partner go pitch stripe as an example? Or what are those battle cards out there? So number two is all about enablement. Great enablement. Number three is about life cycle benefits. And I always look at life cycle benefits in a process, like, how am I going to help the partner co build? What are the benefits I'm going to give them? That could be sandboxes, other other benefits there, how I'm going to help them co sell? That could be incentives. That could be giving them access to a partner development manager. Right? So benefits around helping the partner, co sell with you, that is about mutual success. Number three, I would say, is CO marketing right? What are the right benefits? How are you going to help your market, your partner, to make them successful? As an example, so that benefit stack. And the fourth is CO retaining that end customer. So helping partners get customer success, kind of benefits so they can help make the partner successful. So I would say the third area is having great life cycle benefits around those processes. The fourth area, I would say, is categorizing partners by capabilities. You could say skills, but it's really their capability. And areas like specializations and competencies play into that, because now you're categorizing partners based on what the customer cares about, not vendor to partner, but showcasing partners capabilities through specializations and competencies to end customers. So fourth is categorization by segmenting partners by capabilities. And the fifth area to kind of put a bow around the whole thing, is continuous improvement through metrics and measurement across that life critical, right? How's your partner adopting? Like, if you look at a funnel, where are they at the top of the funnel? But then how do they engage through your benefits, through that life cycle to drive adoption, right? Because if they're not adopting, then you need to do something to improve, or you're not building for the partner, right?

Chip Rodgers  7:28  
So I would put them unless you measure, you don't

Swati Moran  7:31  
know, yeah, exactly. You don't know what to improve unless you can measure, right? So I would say those are like the big, big five buckets of learnings through the years, things that I'm applying at stripe principles and really how we are innovating our partner program in this new SAS economy.

Chip Rodgers  7:48  
Fantastic. Well, so this has been fantastic. Swati, thank you so much. Any advice that you would have for other partner leaders that are watching or listening, and

Swati Moran  8:00  
I would, I would say, is like lesson learned for myself too. In this, don't start with scale in mind. Start with pilot in mind. You know, it's kind of like the crawl, walk, run, start small with your programs. Pilot, it out. Improve upon them, improve some more, maybe improve some more. And then scale. And scale often means like, automation. Might look at tooling like, through that process of crawl, walk, run, right, even in the pilot, like, think about the right automation, the tooling to give you a partner a great experience. And that doesn't mean all digital experience. That means experience of partner, development, management, engagement through that life cycle, your benefits, engagement rate, what is that totality going to look like from a partner experience perspective? So get a great partner experience, because that's why your partners are going to come to you and engage with you. And those principles I talked about, those are going to be the ones that are going to be applicable in building a great partner experience.

Chip Rodgers  9:01  
So I love that, yeah. So I mean, just, you know, start small, prove it out, get the get feedback from the partners, you know, make adjustments, and then, and then get ready to scale.

Swati Moran  9:12  
Yeah, and yeah. And the other piece that I would say super important in building partner strategies be program strategies, which is what I love to do, is you need to get feedback along the way, right? That includes analysts, that includes your partners, right? All those profiles of partners, it includes your internal stakeholders to really that drive that continuous program strategy. I always say a program is like building a product, and all your benefits are features of your product, right? And what do you do when you build products? You talk to all of these kinds of stakeholders, which is the same thing you need to do for great partner programs.

Chip Rodgers  9:52  
Fantastic. Swati, thank you so much. This has been awesome and big day. Yesterday, crazy. A lot of really big day today with, like, back to back, lightning round sessions and and then the the event tonight, and anything that you're looking for today,

Swati Moran  10:12  
that I think there are so many great sessions here around programs, partner management, partner leaders, partner executives, that in totality, I would say this is a great event for SAS partner programs, and really the future where we want to head and coming together as a community to innovate the next generations of our programs that we build.

Chip Rodgers  10:36  
Swati, thank you. Thank you for joining and and we're going to get, you know, get to it here, and thank you all for joining, and we'll see you next time. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Swati. How was that? I.

‍