At the Partnerworld Leadership Conference, IBM announced enhancements to its PartnerWorld program designed to help Business Partners drive growth and profitability through cloud delivery of services and solutions.
 
As the IT environment has evolved, more clients are choosing cloud as their business implementation model. IBM is enhancing its PartnerWorld program to assist Business Partners as they adopt cloud models to deliver services and solutions for clients.  In addition, cloud service providers (CSP) will realize greater support through increased resources and improved incentives.
 
“Recognizing the changing needs of the evolving channel, IBM is providing additional resources to make it easier for CSPs to achieve a faster path to success,” said Marc Dupaquier, general manager, IBM Global Business Partners. “At the same time, we also continue to enable our Business Partners to transform to a cloud model for solutions and services to help them grow and succeed."
 
IBM PartnerWorld program features new and enhanced cloud-related resources available now through a single, consolidated access point, including:
·         ThinkAcademy, IBM’s first massive open online course (MOOC) for Business Partners, providing the same Think Friday training as IBM employees receive, along with more than 20 new online cloud computing courses in the PartnerWorld University cloud education;
·         Cloud services mark, a new IBM ingredient brand mark for cloud solutions and services, enabling eligible Business Partners to promote their services that run on IBM technologies;
·         PartnerWorld Cloud Benefit Guide, IBM's catalog of resources for connecting Business Partners with benefits for building, selling and deploying cloud solutions;
·         PartnerWorld SatScor, IBM's free client satisfaction survey to promote referral marketing and improve sales success.
New Cloud-Based Program Criteria
To make it easier for native cloud-based Business Partners to achieve advanced participation levels in the PartnerWorld program, IBM announced changes to its criteria. Now evolving cloud-based Business Partners can receive higher-value benefits by delivering business impact, achieving skills, providing verified client references and demonstrating client satisfaction. The criteria enhancements are:
·         New business impact measurement which includes credit for new client footprints in addition to existing ledger and influence revenue contributions;
·         Expanded solution verification for on-premise and off-premise hosting services using IBM technologies;
·         Double value for delivery of publishable references;
·         Earn more with PartnerWorld SatScor, which rewards Business Partners for positive client feedback.
New Design and Functionality for IBM PartnerWorld Portal
IBM continues to refine and improve the overall Business Partner experience by reducing the time and complexity in accessing IBM benefits via the PartnerWorld portal. Improvements include simplified navigation and enhanced search, improving content quality and enabling social engagement, providing an additional estimated 25,000 hours of Business Partner productivity.
 
IBM Business Partners will realize greater value and positive impact to their business results from the following improvements:
·         New “Join PartnerWorld” registration web pages that takes about 10 minutes to complete;
·         Customization capabilities, such as company-wide shortcuts, designed to help streamline the user experience for frequent visitors to the PartnerWorld portal with Business Partners stating these short-cuts improved their experience;
·         With the new search optimization features, saving hours and helping drive additional opportunity, on average the desired results appears in the top 5 results or as a suggested match for 95% of the top 100 search terms.
 
For more information about IBM’s PartnerWorld Program, visit:  ibm.com/partnerworld/2014/program/enhancements.