Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis delivers actionable recommendations for improving partner program architecture and strategy

The Challenge

How do I strengthen my company’s partner value proposition to create greater competitive advantage?

The client, a large ISV, was evaluating its go-to-market approach in comparison to several industry competitors. The client and each of its major competitors had recently launched major changes to their partner programs. There was uncertainty, however, about how these changes affected partners’ perceptions of the client’s partner value proposition.

The challenge was to assess the new competitive landscape and determine which changes were material to partners and how their competitive positioning was affected by the new program launches. The goal was to:

  • Understand the competitive positioning of the client’s go-to-market approach relative to market competitors
  • Identify what partners look for in various partner programs
  • Determine which improvements to the client’s approach were most likely to generate the highest ROI
  • Identify potiential changes that would provide an additional competitive advantage

The Approach

Identify partner program changes to make by performing a competitive analysis of partner programs and ecosystems

  • Identified differentiating features of competitors’ go-to-market programs
  • Distilled a large volume of research into compelling competitor summaries
  • Produced quantitative analysis of competitors’ partner ecosystems
  • Provided qualitative insight into how partner program differences affect competitive positioning within the market
  • Benchmarked and compared new partner programs from the client and from key competitors
  • Identified strengths and weaknesses of each company’s approach across consistent areas
  • Made actionable recommendations on how to improve the client’s competitive positioning
  • Provided an extensible approach to inform and improve the process for future analysis

The Result

A strategy and implementation plan for updating the client’s partner program to provide greater competitive advantage

  • Delivered focused reports of competitors’ partner programs highlighting key strengths and weaknesses
  • Developed evidence-based strategies for improvement and refinement
  • Provided specific recommendations for improving competitive positioning
  • Offered suggestions on what to continue to track in order to streamline and improve future competitive analysis
  • Created repositories of research materials for use and reference in future competitive analysis projects

“Touch offered key insights that guided architecture decisions and formed the foundation for our competitive partner strategy.”