When sparks collide: how perfect partner opportunities build businesses

I am a great believer in strength in numbers. As a partner driven business, iVend Retail has built its success on working with talented individuals and dynamic companies to help retailers leverage greater profits – and the appetite for this type of model is increasing.

Why? Because the majority of retailers today crave more than just a technology vendor. Granted, some of the largest companies will have the in-house resources to select and customise solutions for their individual needs, but for the majority, their requirements are much greater than purely equipment and its accompanying software.

These retailers want to work with technology providers who understand their unique challenges, and have the resources and connections to meet them. They want to partner with firms who speak the retail language, appreciate key industry trends, realise which person owns each operational pain, and ask the right questions to find a solution to address them.

At our recent partner summit event in Dublin, it became clear to me just how important the role of successful partnerships are in today’s highly competitive retail environment. The growth of omnichannel retail has increased business complexities to unprecedented levels, meaning specialist knowledge is required in every channel, for every challenge.

Rather than retailers trying to become a ‘jack of all trades’ and spreading their knowledge too thinly, partnerships present the opportunity to draw on expertise and complimentary technology, in order to create an effective, robust solution.

Combining strengths and experience makes a partner-based model incredibly appealing to retailers, and better equips providers to address issues or add functionality as requirements change – which is critical to retaining business.

The key to ensuring such partnerships are successful relies on all parties working together, in many different ways. Firstly, on a technical level; a partner offering multichannel retail solutions, grows up to 4x faster than those selling a non-integrated solution.

Secondly, on a strategic level. Though there are a number of possible partnership models, each one entails alignment of messaging across all brands. For example, iVend Retail has sales and delivery capabilities in more than 45 countries, but our solutions are developed, serviced and supported centrally.

Therefore ensuring partners are aligned to both our strategy and our latest product developments is crucial to delivering maximum value in all markets. This is why we dedicate great resources to holding regular partner events, during which we assist our partner vendors with pre-sales, sales and consulting services – so they feel confident promoting and selling our solutions.

After all, as a company reliant on our partners’ capabilities, we realise that international businesses are built on outstanding customer services as well as enabling technology. Ongoing support is the most effective way to add strength to our numbers.