Building a Thriving Broadcom Partner Ecosystem: What’s Next

In a traditional channel model, Broadcom would be just one bullet point on a reseller’s line card – if partners needed a certain cybersecurity competency, for example, they would leaf through their line cards and, if we fit their need, they would pick us. As my colleague Cynthia Loyd, Vice President of Global Partner, Enterprise, and Commercial Sales, recently shared in her blog, “Reinventing Partner Go-to-Market Business Models,” this approach didn’t serve our customers or partners and, instead, as Cynthia wrote, Broadcom built an innovative “highly scalable, close-to-the-customer partner ecosystem.”  

Our partners not only have embraced our innovative go-to-market approach, but also are using it to reinvent their own business within a very mature industry. In this piece, we’ll take a closer look at the key reasons behind the program’s success and what partners can expect in the future.

No reward without risk

When Broadcom designs a new business model or program, we consider the following three factors: 

1. Does it drive a better outcome for the customer? 
2. Does it allow for an enabled profitability for a partner?
3. Does it drive better efficiency for Broadcom?

Our Global Cybersecurity Aggregator program, an industry-first, not only answers “yes” to all three questions, but provides a financial incentive that drives investments not only by the aggregators, but also the local partners who interface with those aggregators. By making investments in enablement, training, and adding more Broadcom Knights, an elite group of technical professionals, these partners are up leveling their skill sets to deliver services to end customers faster and more efficiently.

The success of the program depends on our partners’ willingness to take risks. Risk drives investment, which drives commitment and results in a financial “upside” for our partners. Broadcom’s partner “upside” is better than anything else in the industry – not just five or six points additional margin, a little rebate here, etc. 

Rob Jacobs, head of Broadcom Business Group at Arrow, our strategic Cybersecurity Commercial Aggregator in EMEA, has experienced that upside: “Broadcom has invested several million dollars in making our cooperation work by creating training programs, certifications, channel partner and end user communications, which drive awareness and create demand. Our collaboration has delivered outstanding results in the last year.”

Designing new enablement and training to better serve partners 

To better serve our partners and customers, Broadcom is evolving its enablement and training to go beyond supporting single products. For example, during the pandemic, organizations needed to deliver remote services to their employee base. While there might be one or two Broadcom solutions involved, there are many other technologies that Broadcom doesn’t have that are also required to deliver a comprehensive solution for that end customer. Today our partners are looking at what the customer’s ultimately trying to deliver from a business standpoint and provide that multi-tool integration.

As a result, we have been focused on helping our partners deliver comprehensive sales plays that are not product-specific to deliver better customer outcomes.  In many cases, these plays are not just to drive a new license sale; we’re all about more and deeper use of already-licensed Broadcom technology. Customers who stick with our products longer are more likely to look to us for additional products. To help our partners address broader, more complex business challenges and provide more holistic, integrated solutions, we have expanded sales enablement tools and training. We make these sales plays available to all our partners to pull down, via self-service from our partner portal, which enables us to scale and allow partners, of all sizes, to grow and thrive.

What’s ahead

At Broadcom, we are always gathering feedback and listening to our partners. We continue to evaluate the programs and tools to help provide more value and support to our partners. Most recently, we completed a survey of our regional partners. Based on their feedback, Broadcom will be providing more support, architect, and technologists that our partners need to integrate our products into a broader set of solutions that are the underpinnings for the many business goals that our customers are trying to achieve. In fact, I’m in the process right now of hiring more in-house staff so we can provide more focus and support for our partners. 

We also plan to grow our highly successful Broadcom Knights program. As more and more customers look to our partners for deeper technical expertise, these same partners are investing in the Knights program which promotes visible differentiation of a partner company’s capabilities and expertise in Broadcom solutions. In fact, the popularity of the Broadcom Knights has prompted us to expand the program to include additional brands within Broadcom, so expect us to make more investments in how we support these highly skilled professionals 

Want to learn more about our partner program or how our partners are serving today’s organizations? Visit us here or contact your local partner representative.