Last year passed at a breakneck speed for channels consulting company Channels Enablers, who aggressively expanded globally. Despite a global re-branding exercise, the company mission and business strategy have not changed in any way - it is still geared up to provide the highest value-add global channel strategy to the largest IT and telecommunications companies in the world.

According to Greg Eckstein, senior director, Asia Pacific, Channel Enablers, it is this very strategy and single-minded focus that is the key to their success. It is what differentiates them from other such channels consulting companies and is also the reason why they are growing at such a breathtaking speed.

Channel Enablers spectacular growth is also due to acquisitions made over the last 3 years, including one in Singapore, one in Melbourne and another in San Francisco. Eckstein says that these acquisitions have given the company a global presence which once again further differentiates them from their competitors. He summarizes it by saying, "Our customers get the same quality and expertise, no matter where they are."

He also says that the majority of their work in the region is in Singapore mainly because many of the headquarters of large IT and telecommunication vendors are located here. China is also keeping the company very busy because as Eckstein succinctly puts it, "Everyone wants to be there, and Channel Enablers has great Chinese expertise." The company has a very experienced senior consultant in their office in Shanghai.

The company is still in the midst of their massive rebranding campaign which started last year. According to Eckstein, the growth of the company spurred this and they have invested a lot of money into establishing "a very valuable brand equity."

The rebranding campaign has 3 stages – the first being the launch of the new company logo and the subsequent changes to their letterheads, business cards and other office stationery. The second is the launch of the new integrated company website which will be unveiled in the first week of March. The third phase is further investment in the company’s brand equity. “Basically, Channel Enablers expertise, knowledge, global nature and quality equals our brand equity. We also try to help our clients create a competitive advantage and differentiate themselves from their competitors through mastering, understanding and implementing effective partnering strategies,” explains Eckstein.

He adds that the biggest challenge is always making a company’s partners’ excited enough to want to take a vendor’s product versus a competitor’s product. "Hence why partnering strategy is the key to success and why Channel Enablers wants to be seen and identified immediately as the company providing partner strategy consulting and advice in the Asia Pacific," he says.

A major challenge in Asia Eckstein says, “Is that most companies in the region don’t know what they don’t know.” This is also the why partnering strategy is getting more sophisticated. “Companies are recognizing that it more than just having good technology and taking their partners out drinking and golfing. Those days are over. Everything now boils down to building effective long-term partnering strategy.”

Companies in the region are also beginning to realize that the leverage is now on the side of the partner unlike the 1990s. “Good partners are hard to find and vendors are realizing this and understanding just why a sophisticated partnering strategy is needed to attract the 20% of partners who are exceptional.”

According to Eckstein, 80% of partners just want a brand and are opportunistic. One of the services Channel Enablers provides is partner screening and helping their clients discover the ideal profile of their partners through the Channel Pro Methodology.

"What’s interesting about ChannelPro is that it can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be. For example, something as simple as market segmentation can be made more complicated and granular," he explains.

He says that Channels Enablers hasn’t yet come across any vendor who does all 7 areas which are part of the Channel Pro Methodology well, yet alone mastered them. “Different vendors are strong in different areas and this is also because of market changes and extenuating circumstances. Every country in Asia is different – there are no two that are the same and this diversity is why companies need partnering strategies in Asia. Essentially, partnering strategy equals to a company’s long-term success in the region.”

A key challenge to partnering strategies in the region is establishing a partner strategy that is aligned to the culture of partnering within the executive level of an organization. “Vendors have to realize that in a partnering strategy, they have very little, maybe even no control as the control is with the partner,” says Eckstein.

"Vendors have to think of partners as venture capitalists who want to invest, who see the opportunity, and who see who’s going to win because of course they want to see an increase in returns. Partners can only be attracted to a partnering strategy that has clarity, so vendors have to sell the strategy as a value proposition," elaborates Eckstein.

He continues, “Partnering is really a marriage. Not only do vendors need to be trained but their partners as well, and this is expensive.” A lot of vendors do product training and the rest of the “rah-rah” says Eckstein but it is those who really concentrate on this whose partners tend to do well.

Eckstein says that a holistic approach is very necessary in order to understand why you’re in the partnering strategy and according to him, vendors are also realizing this and seeing how crucial it is to have a channel methodology in place.
Channel Enablers Channel Pro gives vendors the ability to establish an effective and thorough process for a successful partnering strategy and also provides them with a suite of tools to diagnose their partnering problems.

Commenting on why Channel Enablers has no competitors in the region, Eckstein says it’s because the Asia Pacific market is a fragmented market. Any competitors around are mainly one and two-man consultants, and these are very often only temporary businesses. Channel Enablers on the other hand has made a huge investment to be global and has worked hard to build a deep relationship with its customers. “We provide high quality service in a niche market,” says Eckstein thoughtfully.

In addition, the company’s executives are a passionate bunch who love what they are doing. “We live, eat and breathe channels. People sometimes call us aggressive, but we feel it is more passion than anything else. We have also been accused of going into too many layers of detail but it’s because we just want to understand the problems companies face in their partner strategies,” he says matter-of-factly.

"Our greatest strength is definitely our people who are all highly experienced and skilled specialists." Moreover, Eckstein emphasizes that the ChannelPro Methodology is unique  and that the largest organizations around the world are adopting it.

"We have never veered away from our philosophy of delivering quality channel and alliance services using processes that are based on best practice methodologies," says Eckstein. With such focus, passion and dedication, it is no wonder why Channels Enablers has taken Asia and the rest of the world by storm.