Fivetran Looks To Deepen Its Relationships With Resellers Through Expanded Partner Program - Exclusive

The data movement technology developer is unveiling an expanded channel program today with new discount opportunities for resellers and enhanced rebates for influencers that take on a bigger role through the customer sale and onboarding cycles.

Fivetran is extending its partner program in a bid to increase the number of VARs it works with, offering new reseller discounts, additional go-to-market collaboration opportunities and expanded technical enablement.

Fivetran, a leading provider of data movement and transformation technology, is also increasing the “finder’s fees” it pays partners who reference-sell the company’s big data software and bring deals to the Oakland, Calif-based company.

The additions, being announced today, come as Fivetran reports growing demand for its automated data movement platform as the wave of AI application and model development is boosting the demand for tools that can move, integrate and prepare high volumes of data.

Fivetran has also been expanding globally, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, including opening a new India headquarters in Bangalore just last month.

“Fivetran eclipsed over 35 percent growth last year. And a big part of that was contribution from our partners,” said Logan Welley (pictured), Fivetran vice president of strategic alliances, in an interview with CRN.

“We've always been a partner-obsessed organization. You cannot buy Fivetran by itself, it literally just won't work. We really embody selling it with and alongside our partners, ultimately to unlock the best customer value. And our partner contribution has continued to scale alongside Fivetran’s astronomical growth,” he said.

Fivetran has traditionally worked with regional and global systems integrator partners, including Accenture, Cognizant and Capgemini, who leverage the company’s platform as part of broader data projects to support digital transformation initiatives, operational systems, and analytical and AI applications. Such projects often involve combining, preparing and transforming data from multiple cloud and on-premises systems.

“We've made massive inroads in working with the GSI partners. The global system integrators have leaned in with Fivetran immensely, particularly as it pertains to their hyperscaler practices, their data practices, and unlocking the massive growth we're seeing around Databricks and Snowflake,” Welley said.

Fivetran has worked with resellers such as SHI and CDW and paid them 10-percent finder’s fees when they brought deals to the company. But until now Fivetran’s relationship with resellers has been more “opportunistic,” the channel executive said, and the Fivetran Partner Program has lacked a true reseller component. “This year, we're going to be way more proactive.”

The new program introduces four partner tiers offering structured benefits based on engagement level, with partners at the top tier eligible to earn programmatic discounts of up to 30 percent. Top-tier partners can also earn rebates on contract values to ensure customers are successfully onboarded and getting the most out of the Fivetran platform.

Partners who source and influence customer deals, but don’t resell, can earn rebates up to 15 percent of a contract’s value with that divided between 5 percent for sourcing customers, 5 percent for co-selling with Fivetran, and 5 percent for onboarding customers once a sale is completed.

“The new partner program is aligned to incentivize a partner throughout the journey of a customer adopting Fivetran, from learning about Fivetran, to working with Fivetran on getting Fivetran selected as a vendor, and then ultimately turning [the Fivetran platform] on and syncing data,” Welley said.

The new partner program also provides joint sales opportunities, co-branded marketing programs and demand-generation tools. On the enablement side the new Fivetran Partner Academy offers sales, technical and delivery training, certifications, and expertise for deploying Fivetran for hybrid environments, data lakes, AI use cases and AI-driven analytics.

The company, in the partner program announcement, also said it is “putting strategies in place to encourage and reward its sales teams for pursuing joint business with partners.”

“Fivetran is maturing our partner program by offering two models that fit the partners in [how] they go to market,” Welley said. “We look at this as ultimately supporting the partner end to end, driving and unlocking new incentives that go beyond just the entry point. We want the partners to join us on that customer adoption journey.”

“Aligned incentives, extensive enablement, and collaborative solutioning are key to allowing us to solve our mutual clients’ data movement needs,” said Ryan Gifford, managing director of global data and AI at Seattle-based Slalom, a strategic service provider that partners with Fivetran. “Fivetran’s enhanced partner program strengthens the highly aligned ecosystem that is becoming increasingly vital as our clients’ data requirements grow. This is a great move that will allow us to do even more together,” Gifford said in a statement.

While the growing data demands of AI have certainly fueled Fivetran’s growth – and its need for the expanded program – Welley said the new partner initiatives are “more of a natural maturation” for the company.

“We needed to meet partners where they were to enable them and train them [and] also offer the incentives that work for their market and their model,” the channel executive said. “We saw the need for us to mature the way that we engaged with and incentivized partners. A lot of this was built on partners giving us feedback for where we could improve. And we heard them and we implemented that.”

All components of the expanded Fivetran Partner program are now in place, according to the company, with more partner opportunities rolling out later this year.