Enhanced Partner Portal Powers IBM’s New Channel Program

IBM has announced a new partner program, IBM Partner Plus, that reimagines how the company engages with its business partners through unprecedented access to IBM resources, incentives, and tailored support to deepen their technical expertise and help speed time to market.

The program is designed to fuel growth for new and existing partners, including resellers, hyperscalers, technology providers, independent software vendors and systems integrators, by putting them in control of their earning potential. IBM Partner Plus is central to the company’s Hybrid Cloud and AI strategy and aims to empower partners to help clients automate, secure and modernize their businesses.

IBM Partner Plus offers partners a transparent, simple and modern experience. By growing technical expertise and demonstrating sales success, participants can progress to three tiers – Silver, Gold and Platinum – which unlock specialized financial, go-to-market support and education benefits. In the new program, badging will become the standardized measure of skills and validated solutions will demonstrate expertise.

The enhanced IBM Partner Portal consolidates and tracks all expertise, revenue, and deals globally, offering each partner a clear line-of-site into their progression through the program. “Essentially, it provides partners all the tools and resources needed for them to win with clients,” IBM told CMR.

At the time of launch, partners have access to IBM My Digital Marketing, a marketing automation platform with ready-to-use assets, that allows them to plan, customize, execute and measure marketing campaigns. Partners can also leverage marketing kits designed by IBM experts, which are customizable, partner-ready campaigns to help with digital prospecting, event execution and lead progression to accelerate demand generation.

The IBM My Digital Marketing platform provides campaign support that includes:

• A visual identity that signals partner as sender (not IBM as sender); including partner logo and contact information;
• Adaptable deliverables, with an option for partner service/solution descriptions to be added, and;
• Routing CTA assets and responses to partner landing page (not to IBM URLs).

Growth Marketing Program

In July 2023, the new growth marketing program will go live. This refreshed demand-generation program rewards those IBM Partner Plus Gold and Platinum tier partners that invest and grow with IBM with incremental marketing funding, supported by named marketing focals. Additionally, investment allocations will increase by 3x, on average, and the cap on investment allocations will increase by 50%, providing partners that are growing with IBM deeper levels of investment to accelerate growth.

IBM Partner Plus brings all partner types and programs together – whether they sell, build on or with, and/or provide services for IBM technology – into one integrated ecosystem. For example, to help broaden the market opportunity and create new revenue streams for its ecosystem, IBM recently enabled partners in North America to resell IBM products through other cloud marketplaces. This allows for independent software vendors to embed IBM Software from partner marketplaces into their own solutions. All partner sales through the marketplace accumulate towards their progression in IBM Partner Plus. 

“IBM Partner Plus introduces a new way for IBM to deliver value to new and existing partners by helping them gain skills, grow faster and earn more,” said Kate Woolley, General Manager, IBM Ecosystem. “We’ve heard from partners that they want a simplified experience that helps them win with clients. I’m confident these changes and our continued investment in our ecosystem will make IBM the partner of choice across the industry, and together we can drive growth for partners, clients, and IBM.”