How monday.com restructured its Partner Ecosystem

monday.com started building its partner ecosystem in 2018, and from day 1, our North Star was to create the best partner program in the SaaS space. But in the competitive world of SaaS, building and maintaining a world-class partner program that captures the full potential of your ecosystem is no easy feat.

Even after overcoming the wide array of challenges related to establishing a successful partner program and positioning the partnerships concept in the company, partnership professionals constantly need to align the program with the company strategy and industry standards. SaaS companies are dynamic by nature and partnership needs can evolve overtime, therefore, partner program structures need to be elastically developed with the changing tides.

At monday.com, we recently revamped our partner programs while adjusting to our ever growing ecosystem needs, carving out additional partnership opportunities and revenue streams, and most importantly, empowering partners to achieve their full potential and grow in the path most suitable for their business.

Reflecting on our experiences and learnings, in this article we would like to share the motivations, crucial steps and key changes associated with the ecosystem restructure.

Motivation

The monday.com partner ecosystem has come a long way. In its first few years, the partner ecosystem was very focused on selling software licenses, which was aligned with where we were as a company and the hyper-growth mode we were in. While selling licenses is still top of mind for monday.com, as our platform matured, our customers’ needs became more complex (especially when going upmarket) and our strategy was updated, we had to keep evolving our partner programs.

The above changes also presented an opportunity to create new partnership tracks for the partner profiles we are aiming to attract & retain, while carving out additional revenue streams for partners to further grow their monday business.Additionally, we envisioned a more collaborative environment where both partners and customers can flourish alongside one another .

To summarize, the changes were mainly fueled by the following:

Customer value: ensuring that our vast and diverse customer base has access to a wider range of partner expertise, solutions, integrations, and apps tailored to their specific needs.
Empowering partners: shaping our partner programs to enable all partner types in the ecosystem to grow on the track most suitable for them , while accessing the right resources and support needed to grow their businesses and provide the best customer experience.

The restructure process

The changes to our partner ecosystem didn’t happen overnight. Effectively revamping your partner programs requires a deep and thorough thought process. In our case, among others, the process included the following:

Benchmarking: As successful as your partner ecosystem might be, there is always something to learn from other SaaS companies (large or small) that have encountered or are still encountering similar challenges. At monday.com, when taking a meaningful step in our partner programs evolution, we religiously benchmark against other programs while striking the right balance between implementing industry best practices (which partners expect to see) and catering to our unique needs. There are many ways to approach benchmarking including online research, talking to industry peers, leveraging powerful partnership professionals communities (such as Partnerships Leaders), partner interviews or advisory boards, and more..

Aligning with company strategy: Understanding strategies adopted by other vendors is not enough. Each company has unique needs. In order to be aligned with monday.com’s overall strategy, we held various sessions with the partnerships leadership team and key stakeholders to collect feedback on our suggested approach and ensure the new structure is helping us achieve our goals . This feedback loop is crucial for internal buy in, we always stay elastic and open to making changes.

3 main partnership tracks: After agreeing on the strategy, we mapped out the different partner types we wish to cater to and then checked whether our existing partner programs enable & support them. This exercise helped us to carve out 3 main partnership tracks that would allow our partner ecosystem to either sell & implement monday.com, deliver more advanced professional services, and build & monetize apps.

New Solutions Partner Program: At monday.com, we identified over the years that our referral program holds a lot of untapped potential. We noticed that many of our referral partners wish to deepen & grow their monday practices and unlock additional benefits. This presented an opportunity to save some recruitment costs & resources, while developing through the referral funnel the next generation of channel partners. To accommodate this referral incubation strategy, we decided to take it one step forward and merge the referral & channel programs under one Solution Partners Program umbrella. The new program includes a unified tiering system supporting multiple partner types and allowing partners to grow at their own pace. New Solution Partners have the option to either:

Start small – dip their toes in the water as an Authorized Partner and realize the program value. According to their performance and the pace they feel comfortable with, start climbing up the tiers to unlock more benefits.
Invest early – start as a SIlver partner from day 1 to unlock more revenue streams and opportunities, while meeting more demanding requirements.

Professional Services: to cater to Solution Partners interested in growing their professional services arm, a separate Professional Services badge can also be earned to unlock specific service benefits. We further carved out for Tier 1 regions (NAM, ANZ, UK) – in which monday partners can be more services-oriented – a dedicated services track to allow them to climb up the ladder and reach Gold or Platinum status through specific PS requirements.

Product specializations: Running in parallel, we also opened the opportunity for Solution Partners to earn product specialization badges through product specific requirements and unlock even more benefits. This enables partners to be positioned inside monday and in front of customers as specific product experts. It also helps monday ensure that partners are focused on products that are key to our strategy.

Partner application process: As part of the restructure, we closed the loop with creating a unified partner application process with clear internal roles & responsibilities to provide a seamless partner experience.

Communication to existing partners: One of the most important learnings we’ve had throughout the years is the power of effective communication with our partners. We see partners as an extension of our company, and as with every key program update, we clearly communicated the changes and their impact on existing partners prior to the rollout. It’s vital to stay attentive to any feedback coming from your ecosystem (especially your top partners). Our key forms of communication with partners are webinars and online sessions to share major updates, and we also use our Partner Community and partner managers to reinforce the message.

Rollout: After finalizing all the internal changes needed to accommodate the new Partner Ecosystem structure (content, design, infra, etc.) we rolled it out globally and it is now live in our Partnerships landing page.

monday.com’s new Partner Ecosystem

Ok, so we went through the motivations and process to release our restructured Partner Ecosystem. But what does partnering with monday actually look like today?

monday partners can now access 3 main revenue streams: selling software licenses and earning commissions, delivering professional services and collecting service revenues, and building and monetizing apps in the Apps Marketplace.

With that, we are happy to introduce our new Partner Ecosystem, which includes 3 main partner programs associated with each of these revenue streams:

Solution Partners Program – for partners that refer, sell, and implement monday.com. This program enables partners to grow their business as they enjoy exclusive benefits and commission rates.
Service Partners Program – for partners that deliver expert professional services to monday.com customers, from onboarding & training to fully customized workflows.
App Marketplace Partners Program – for partners that build and monetize apps on the monday.com app marketplace to reach over 225,000 customers in hundreds of industries.

Each of these programs addresses different partner needs and offers support & benefits to help our partners make the most out of their monday.com practices. To consult the full list of benefits and requirements for each, please visit our new partnerships landing page.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates on monday.com’s Partner Ecosystem!

This blog post was co-written by: