When I was starting out in the software development business, I was part of the Product team as part of what was primarily a consulting firm. When I joined Agility (then Edentity) in 2005 we immediately set a direction for the firm to be Product-focused, and slowly but surely we moved from custom applications to building websites exclusively on our own platform, Agility.
Fast forward many years closer to the present and we were presented with a unique opportunity. Our own Professional Services team had grown in both size and in its capacity to implement new systems using the Agility platform. At the same time, we were devoting more and more energy to our partner channel, growing and nurturing close alliances with organizations who were keen to tap into Agility’s True-Cloud approach themselves.
We were, without really intending to do so, competing with our partners. It wasn’t even a fair competition, either. Our own services team was growing rapidly and had near-unlimited access to the platform engineers who were bringing new offerings to life, such as Agility Ecommerce and Ticketing. If our goal was to bring the Agility Platform to more customers and really capitalize on how immensely scalable our system is, we would have to think long and hard about what we were going to do next.
So that’s what we did: we thought long and hard. We had discussions, arguments, and we dug deep into our real intentions for what we wanted Agility to become. We found ourselves returning time and again to a concept that had come about many years ago in a strategy discussion: the “freedom index.” This is a SaaS metric: the point at which recurring revenue from subscriptions covers the day-to-day expenses. We had just about given up on this metric since the growth of services team really made this a moving target that was just too frustrating to try and hit.
We started to look at the problem in a different way, though. What if we didn’t have to worry about building and implementing solutions anymore, but we are to rely on our partners to do that for us. We could help them build their services business and we could start to really scale the platform in a way that benefits everyone – our customers, our partners, and yes, us.
An Amazing Program, with Amazing Benefits for Partners
Today, we at Agility are pleased to announce that we are not only helping our partners grow, we are also helping them make money doing it. We believe Agility is the best platform for teams to deliver cloud-based solutions faster and with more flexibility than any other system. At the Silver, Gold and Platinum levels, Agility partners receive increasing levels of commission on the licensing for new contracts. That means that when a Silver, Gold or Platinum level Agility Partner brings a new customer to the platform, we will share our revenue with that partner!
At the same, Agility partners now receive unprecedented levels of access to the Agility support team, platform engineers, and also benefit from sales assistance. In terms of roadmap, Agility is able to offer our closest partners deep collaboration on how we bring new offerings to market, as well as how we improve existing functionality in order to bring more value to our customers.
Learn more about the Agility Partner Program, and become an Implementation Partner today.
