For the first time in over eight years, ERP vendor, Infor, is gearing up to launch a new partner program. Senior vice-president of business development for Infor, Jeanne Newberry, describes the program as “a defining moment for partners.”
Set for launch on January 2, 2025, the new partner program reflects a change from Infor’s decade-long development of acquiring industry-vertical ERP players, to redeveloping those assets into industry-vertical “cloud suites”, aiming to ramp up the challenge for Infor’s strongest competitors.
By acquiring platforms that already have go-to-market models, Infor is positioned to hit the ground running with its new partner program. By communicating with 28 global partners, Infor gained feedback and insight to help ensure a smooth launch.
The old partner program, which Infor describes as lucrative for some but not so much for cloud-heavy partners, needed to adapt to reflect current industry trends. Newberry, speaking at the Infor Velocity summit on October 24, said the new program hopes to “double down on partners” and focus on growing SaaS.
Infor hopes to achieve this goal by shifting from a reseller-focused model to a more programmatic engagement across all partner types. Newberry described this change as a “cloud-modern” engagement model.
“We think about our partners and how they add value across the entire customer journey,” she said. “We’ve only recognized and rewarded them for that resell.”
Infor’s current ecosystem has around 3,000 partners, many of which resell, source, co-sell and deliver Infor tech. The new partner program has been specifically designed to be volume-based and aligned with a cloud-friendly vision – meaning it’s scalable and repeatable, compared to the previous program that relied on individual partner quotas that could be complex for partners to manage.
With a cloud-based Infor stack, partners would need greater support and enablement. While Infor previously heavily focused on certification for its delivery partners, the support has extended to include access to vendor sale tools and methodologies – which can include persona-specific learning paths that can aid in building positive customer relationships.
“We are looking to support partners in a very different way than in the past to ensure delivery success with the customer at the center,” Newberry said.
“What that means from a support perspective is, whether it’s a complex sales pursuit or we are shifting towards a very complex implementation, we will have a delivery success model that supports those partners across that journey. We have to do a better job of enabling our partners to deliver our technology to customers.”
The new partner program is one of the first big changes for Infor, with plans to introduce its own marketplace at some point in 2025.
