How to evaluate?
As a SaaS business, how do you evaluate partners? In this article, we explore a framework for just that.
Context
If you read our content, you know that we are very partner-friendly and believe that working with partners is a great way to grow your SaaS revenue. Having the right partnerships in place is even more important if you are growing your business internationally.
As the number of partners you interact with grows, you will find yourself in a situation where you will need to start making strategic decisions about new partnerships and managing existing partnerships. In our view, it’s always best to make strategic decisions in a structured way. Therefore, we developed a simple framework for evaluating partners that can be easily applied by any SaaS business.
Framework
In our framework, we look at investment vs rewards vs risk. Let’s break this down a bit:
Investment: This should be pretty self-explanatory. It’s the money, time, and other resources you might invest into working with a partner.
Rewards: This is the business value you get from your partner, depending on the nature of your partnership. For instance, this could be revenue, leads, services around your software, etc.
Risk: This should also be quite self-explanatory. Some examples would include potential exposure of competitive intelligence or intellectual property.
Framework in action
In our framework, we look at investment vs rewards vs risk. Let’s break this down a bit:
Investment: This should be pretty self-explanatory. It’s the money, time, and other resources you might invest into working with a partner.
Rewards: This is the business value you get from your partner, depending on the nature of your partnership. For instance, this could be revenue, leads, services around your software, etc.
Risk: This should also be quite self-explanatory. Some examples would include potential exposure of competitive intelligence or intellectual property.