Customers are expecting more from partners: Director of partner and alliances, Okta ANZ

Craig McGregor speaks to CRN Australia about the opportunities and hurdles Australian partners are currently facing.

Customers are expecting partners to go above and beyond just offering a technology solution, they should have a deep understanding of a business, according to Craig McGregor, director of partners and alliances at Okta ANZ.

Speaking to CRN Australia exclusively, McGregor said gone are the days of the customer asking the partner for an opinion on technology direction.

“What they're expecting of partners is that they understand their business intimately,” he explained.

“That they have a broad perspective of what their challenges are, their business problems and they come with a recommendation based on the technology that's going to solve that problem.

“My advice to partners is to make sure you have that mindset of getting off the fence, having an opinion around technology, and ideally working with the vendors that you're working with on having that as a unique differentiation point.”

McGregor said the most successful partners are the ones that understand a vendor and have a unique value proposition to the customer.

“Part of my role and my team's role is to educate our teams on when they should bring in that partner based on that unique value proposition early in the sales cycle,” he said.

“They can put their own spin on that and grow the business on areas that we might not care about, but the partner does.”

Success in a partner program

When asked what success for Australian partners looks like to McGregor, he said it is all about taking genuine and real opportunities, for both vendors and partners.

Okta has an internal term called ‘deal flow’ that is about focusing on real opportunities. McGregor said success for him with a partner is that deal flow, it's the opportunities going genuinely both ways and growing as a result.

“If there's not genuine opportunities that incrementally grows our business going back and forth, then nothing else matters,” he said.

“My experience with vendors is it's so easy with partners to get caught up in so many other different activities. And not every activity leads to that outcome, but the vast majority have to.”

Another point of success for McGregor is the partner being more profitable around Okta.

“I'm not interested in just bringing them opportunities at low margin or fulfilment-only activity that vendors feel like they're adding significant value to them. It's not a great deal for them because they're doing it at low margin,” he said.

“I want them to build a profitable, sustainable service practice around Okta. If they're involved in selling the product, that's great as well, if not that is okay.”

McGregor said what they do around Okta needs to give them a differentiation and be profitable.

“What that gives me is an opportunity to go back to some of these partners and get them to ask for increased investment in their Okta practice,” he said.

“That's a true success measure for me not to supply growing revenue, which is what most vendors care about and don’t get me wrong that's what I care about as well.

McGregor wants the partners growing around their stack too.

“I want us to go up the stack in terms of their profitability around a vendor and once that then we can drive a more meaningful resource model to do even more together,” he ended.