Marketing or Alliances - who precedes whom?

One of my friends who runs a multi-billion dollar APAC channels business for one of the largest ISVs told me about an interesting problem. His marketing team was finding it very difficult to convince many of his business partners on the need to participate in their annual kick-off conference. Having done business with them in the past and having worn the hats of marketing as well as alliance I had my logic taking sides. These two functions are diagonally opposite in their thought frame but equally critical and aligned to business. Diagonally opposite as ‘typical’ marketing thinking rests in the future while a 'typical' alliance thinking (where the rubber hits the road) rests in the present (read quarter).

The sales team of his partners may not invest in this kick-off as they do not see an RoI in a conference where you mostly have the large ISVs sales team and some of their top customers. A custom event where you are seen as a ‘Platinum sponsor’ costs the same and might give you much more access to prospects (and hence pipeline)

Large organizations, especially ISVs these days are no more organizations, rather ecosystems. Steadily, and at times subtly, customers too get intertwined in ecosystems. Their entry into the ecosystem might be through something as small as a 'feature' to as big as a 'platform'. However once business drivers take the engagement forward the entire world of options reduces to the ecosystem around that product. This essentially means there is a strong incentive for all, if not most (seller) organizations, to align and be seen as a part of an ecosystem.

Identifying the right ecosystem to play is an extremely strategic decision which the 'strategic alliance’ function has to lead while ensuring the world knows of your allegiance to that ecosystem is a function of 'tactical' marketing. However there is a layer in between these two which is often forgotten - 'Strategic alliance marketing'. The end customer (and shareholders, prospects and employees) are least bothered of your allegiance as long as you do not bring/articulate a clear value to the ecosystem by being a part of it. Identifying and articulating/building messages around that value add is a function of ‘strategic alliance marketing’. Quite often the whole marketing thinking is missing when the alliance function takes the driver's seat and the alliance thinking is missing when marketing takes a driver's seat. This is where the ‘Strategic Alliance marketing’ function becomes most critical. The world cares nothing about SAP, Intel and Cisco coming together unless there is a clear incremental benefit of them being together in my data center, which otherwise I don’t get.

As the ecosystem play expands, the future of these two pivotal functions, without doubt rests in the 'thinking' alignment of both.