Imagine adding a new vendor to your partner line up and increasing your bottom line profitability by 5% within one year? That is exactly the incredible success “Emerging Partner of the Year” CompuNet has had with Gemalto’s Cipher Partner program.
“Gemalto year over year bookings grew by 5x. Average gross margin in 2017 increased by 5% putting Gemalto in the top tier of our solution offerings in terms of profitability. Across the board, we view Gemalto as a strategic partner enabling profitability and other pull through opportunities on services and complementary solution sets.” This is what Tina Jennings, Director of Business Development at CompuNet, had to say about the growing relationship with Gemalto.
Mid 2017, Gemalto announced a partner-first sales strategy by significantly increasing the investment and support for partners participating in the Gemalto Cipher Partner Program (CPP). Key to this partner-first strategy was providing partners with increased partnering opportunities, while also rewarding those partners that were investing in Gemalto solutions with greater deal registration and profitability for channel generated deals.
Protecting customers’ data is a big concern and worldwide spending on security product and services is expected to grow to $96 billion in 2018 according to Gartner. Increasingly, companies rely on channel partners for their expertise and guidance in navigating the rapidly changing landscape.
Gemalto has put the customer front and center and is working closely with partners to provide a strong breadth and depth of security solutions that best fit how customers want to buy while also providing partners more flexibility in transaction models. This ultimately makes complex solutions more consumable for customers while increasing partners’ ability to sell more and add incremental products, and services on to drive higher overall profitability.
The investment in a partner-first approach was not just a mind shift as it was also backed by increased investment in field sales alignment, new tools, and partner focused resources for driving stronger partner engagement and enablement. This investment is paying strong dividends as Gemalto has experienced double digit year on year growth in our partner incremental revenue and in our partner loyalty scores.
There is nothing better than a real world example of a successful partnership, Gemalto sat down with our “Emerging Partner of the Year” award winner, CompuNet. For me, one of the most striking reasons for CompuNet’s success, was the complete buy-in with the Gemalto Cipher Partner Program and fully leveraging all the training and enablement tools to be able to successfully sell and deliver Gemalto solutions to their customers and drive a strong ROI and increased profitability.
Watch our short video to hear first-hand from Darrin Good, global security architect at CompuNet, for his insights into Gemalto’s Cipher Partner Program. Below, Darrin and his colleague Jeffrey Zier, systems engineer at CompuNet, share more personal insights into how other partners can take advantage of the Gemalto program and what made their experience so successful.
For a more information, continue reading our Q&A with Darrin and Jeffrey
Why did you decide to become a Gemalto Cipher Partner?
Darrin Good: We chose to use Gemalto’s Cipher Partner Program in order to come up with solutions that align with the security framework used by our organization. CompuNet is an engineering-heavy company, and it uses primarily the Center for Internet Security’s critical security controls. Gemalto’s program brought in training and security products that fit with our clients’ security strategies. As such, it helped us grow our portfolio of products to address clients’ different needs.
How did you make your participation in Gemalto’s partner program a successful business opportunity?
DG: At first, we didn’t have a strategy to attain the platinum level of Gemalto’s program. But the engineers were aggressive in their desire to engage the platform. So they dove into the training, which helped them learn about Gemalto’s solutions and what’s working in each market. These training sessions allowed CompuNet to hit gold quickly and platinum a few months later.
The whole process has been great. I cover 18 different products on the line card, and quite a few of them interact with Gemalto’s products. The company’s solutions are easy add-on products.
Jeffrey Zier: I agree. The training sessions from Gemalto makes the solutions easier to sell. I find that I can approach customers and show them how easy it works.
What was exciting about the Gemalto portfolio? How has this increased business?
DG: Customers are most interested in two-factor authentication and hardware security modules. After going through this program, it’s easy for me to go to customers, talk about the products and actually demonstrate how they work.
What is your advice for other partners that are looking to expand their security portfolio?
JZ: Other partners should take advantage of the training. They need to get their feet wet and see what the technology can do. That’s really the first step in helping customers meet their needs whether that’s compliance, protecting data, etc.
DG: I also agree that it’s important to take advantage of the training. It’s time well spent, even when it’s necessary to take engineers out of the field. By knowing the products and their technical specifications, CompuNet can deliver the right solutions to its clients and make them do exactly what we said they would do.
How long did the Gemalto Cipher Partner program take? What things did you learn in the process?
DG: Two years ago, we signed on at the silver level. A new partner framework came out in February, which allowed us to reach gold status shortly thereafter. It was then a 10-month process before we reached platinum status with all of our solutions, though it was a lot less time for some of our products.
Over the course of that time, Gemalto made it easy to bring in classroom training, engage multiple people and help our engineers really dive deep into the solutions. It helped grow certain aspects, so we were able to do one product set and then build on that.
JZ: The training was really valuable because it was a good introduction to each of the products and what they could offer to our customers. That’s an important point for us to do right by the customer, to meet their need. I spent about three to six months working with the technology before I felt really comfortable with it, and I’m still on that path right now.
The Benefits of Joining Gemalto’s Cipher Partner Program
CompuNet’s story is a good illustration of the value that customers derive from joining Gemalto’s Cipher Partner Program. Want more information on how enterprises can benefit from joining the program? Visit Gemalto’s website to find out.
