OpenText Prepares To Revamp Global Channel Program With New Investments

Canada's largest software company is overhauling its partner program and ramping up investment in its channel.

OpenText, a major player in enterprise information management technology, will soon add a referral service, implement a loyalty program and match partners' marketing spends, said Adam Howatson, the company's chief marketing officer.

"We're at a point where we see the opportunity to invest further in our partners and where we can make a meaningful impact in doing that," Howatson told CRN. "We're looking to modernize. This is sort of a new configuration for us to make the meaningful and impactful investments in these programs to elevate partners."

[Related: Box, Carahsoft To Pay $5 Million For Patent Infringement]

The Canadian vendor specializes in organizing unstructured content throughout the enterprise: pretty much everything that's not stored in an enterprise resource planning system, from documents, to contracts, to sales enablement assets, to commercial interactions such as fax and SMS messages to the digital front end via Web properties and online stores.

Such unstructured content accounts for some 90 percent of data within an enterprise -- the category is so broad that OpenText's software facilitates more than $6.5 trillion in commerce a year across 18 billion transactions.

OpenText has more than 1,000 go-to-market partners of all stripes, from global IT consultants like Accenture and Deloitte to regional managed services providers.

Now "we're looking to redefine that program a little bit and make additional investments," Howatson told CRN. "We're investing more than we ever have in our partners to ensure our reach and our footprint [are] global."

The partner program revamp responds to the evolving nature of the channel.

"We want to enable those nimbler, modern startups addressing the newest technologies," Howatson said, "to give them access to us in a meaningful way."

The first change is the introduction of a partner referral program, allowing solution providers that aren't hitting large revenue thresholds or sales targets to work with OpenText and eventually mature the relationship.

Because marketing is such a prominent challenge faced by solution providers, OpenText will also launch a market development fund through which it will match partner marketing spending dollar for dollar. That money can help partners describe the value of the solution to potential customers and provide workshops, Howatson said.

"We'll double their money when they're looking to bring our message to their customers," Howatson said.

Finally, OpenText will debut a loyalty program through which partners who invest in certifications will be rewarded.

"We will look to match to a degree their investment in those spaces, so they can access complementary training and enablement," Howatson said of the loyalty program.

The new parameters and program will go live Nov. 8 at the company's Enterprise World conference in Las Vegas.

Jason Cassidy, CEO of Shinydocs Corp., an OpenText partner based in Kitchener, Ontario, told CRN that as both a technology and go-to-market partner, Shinydocs has been granted extraordinary access to OpenText's platform and its enterprise information management market.

OpenText recognizes and embraces partner technologies, such as his company's Shinydrive solution for simplifying the way people interact with enterprise information, Cassidy told CRN via email.

"The benefits of the new Global Partner Program enables innovative technology vendors like us to scale and access OpenText's global market," Cassidy said.

PUBLISHED OCT. 5, 2015