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As a graduate of Y-Combinator, PartnerStack has been rooted in helping some of the world’s fastest growing SaaS companies scale. Companies like Asana, Monday.com, Unbounce, Intercom, and Intuit all use PartnerStack to manage and scale their partner programs, and onboard thousands of partners into our platform.
There are a few unique aspects to PartnerStack, which has led us to becoming the #1 platform on G2.
PartnerStack is the only solution that has both the PRM and a B2B focused marketplace that connects vendors with partners. On average, our marketplace drives a 30%+ lift in revenue for customers.
We are extremely focused on partner experience, which is a big distinction for us. Most PRMs are focused solely on the vendor experience. But if both sides of this equation are not having a good experience, then it becomes a problem.
And with PartnerStack, all of your channels can be managed from a single platform - affiliate, referral, reseller and ambassador. We see a lot of companies, agencies, and resellers choosing our platform to help them consolidate their channels into a single view.
How is your partnership team structured at PartnerStack?
Our team is still relatively young, as we launched it in April. The majority of this year has been building relationships and working with both agencies and resellers.
I lead the team, and we have an incredible Account Manager that works closely with our partners, as well as a partner marketing manager that works on any co-marketing efforts we run with partners.
Our partnership team is currently focused on two core areas:
We often work with sales when one of their SaaS prospects wants to launch PartnerStack right away but doesn’t have the internal bandwidth. In those cases, we connect them with an agency partner who we know can do it right away and do it well.
Technology partnerships are also on our radar. We have recently built a number of integrations. One of our goals in 2021 and going into 2022 will be to further build out our technology partner program and our own integration marketplace.
We also plan to enter the app marketplaces of other SaaS vendors, especially CRMs like SugarCRM or Hubspot. CRMs are good partners for us because, with the exception of Salesforce, no CRM has a PRM as part of their product offering. So our software is complementary rather than competitive. And it benefits our customers to have those systems integrated.
“If you’re planning to scale your partnerships at all, you need the infrastructure in place to do this.”
<center>- Nikita Zhitkevich<center></center></center>
What advice would you give for organizations trying to think through who their ideal partners are?
Ultimately, everything has to come down to revenue. Whether you’re pursuing referral, reseller, or technology partnerships, you have to tie them back to driving revenue.
Especially since you need the support of other departments in your organization, whether it is collaboration with the sales team or the product team to help build integrations, the benefit to the business needs to be very clear.
For agency and reseller partners, I would advise looking to see if they power similar products to yours. I’d also think about whether the partner will continue to evolve over time in the direction you are going and whether they truly understand your product and space.
In collaboration with the SaaS Ecosystem Alliance we hosted a discussion on Auth, APIs, and integrations looking to clarify what these terms mean out in the field and how they apply to non-technical roles working in SaaS and involved in technology partnerships.
Pandium CEO and Founder, Cristina Flashcen spoke with Alex Savage, Head of Integrations at Advanced and Frank Kilcommins, API Technical Evangelist at SmartBear.
They discussed the role of APIs in today’s tech ecosystems and their ubiquitous nature in today’s SaaS environment. The panel also examined strategies to capitalize on the potential value that APIs have for customer retention and enabling value for the customers in terms of flexibility and customization. Read about some of the conversation below, or watch the full recording here.
Why should non-technical roles involved in SaaS understand Auth, APIs, and integrations?
Whether you’re a tech partnerships manager, salesperson, CX professional, or partner marketer APIs and integrations have become a central part of today’s tech landscape.
“Every industry is trending in this direction, no one will be safe from product integrations and APIs in the future.” - Cristina Flaschen, CEO & Co-Founder of Pandium
Frank summarized that API's are powering the world around us.
“Anyone who's using any form of device in their home, in their professional lives are using API's in some shape, or form,” Frank stated. “That's why everyone needs to have a basic understanding as to what API's are.”
Alex honed in on the potential for APIs and integrations to unlock new value for customers and how they allow SaaS products to serve as a jumping-off point in unlocking value and possibilities to create amazing innovative products.
“The way many people or companies would have traditionally brought value to market is that they would have been in control of the end to end ecosystem and the end-to-end user experience,” Alex shared. “That doesn't really happen anymore. So the concept of embedding your value into other experiences, other ecosystems, other platforms is par for the course now, and it's API's that enable that to happen.”
The panel noted that APIs and integration have gone from a luxury within the SaaS ecosystem to a standard expectation. Through a variety of transitions within the marketplace, APIs are becoming a means of assessing SaaS companies prior to the first interaction with the organization.
Frank highlighted, “I often think of API as being the first UI. It's the first representation of your value that someone in that customer organization might want to consume. And so, if they're going to be critiquing you, they want to see your API catalog and your integration capabilities that are available. That's what they will do to assess you before they strike up a conversation with someone from your company.”
As APIs have become more mainstream, the panel noted the need for individuals throughout the org chart to have a base-level of knowledge that would allow them to converse about APIs and integrations with customers and colleagues.
Alex pointed to a type of democratization that is happening in the industry around the concept of APIs and integrations.
“Even if you don't understand all of it, you can still get that little next hit of knowledge. And then as you build up more and more, this is where we started. It's a very welcoming, great community of people. Including the SaaS Ecosystem Alliance, there are so many communities of people that are just doing this because they think it's the right thing to do to enable people with knowledge, give them capabilities," Alex shared. "APIs and integrations are all about team sports. Let's help each other be successful, because that's what we want to do, make valuable things and go home on time if we can.”
What is an API? What is it for?
Alex summarized the concept of an API as “an intermediary that allows two software components or two software applications that are not connected to each other to be able to converse and understand the syntax and the semantics of messages that are exchanged between the two.” He also went on to further condense his explanation of APIs as a means to “move data and value from one place to another.”
Frank offered his own insights regarding the purpose or use case for APIs.
“It's about enabling transactions to happen by machines, rather than a human being, meaning they're typing all of the things in using a user interface, keyboard, and mouse,” Frank stated. “A machine can do things a lot quicker and a lot more accurately than I can. So it's about unlocking those capabilities. It's the sum of those component parts that are stronger together. So if you can take some API's, build an integration, and connect them together, amazing things happen and you unlock many possibilities.”
Cristina brought home the importance of APIs in today’s tech ecosystem stating that API's are not just for integration, but likely everything that one does on the internet.
Who uses APIs?
“Everyone is using APIs all the time, which is why there's so many of them now and why it's so important to get them, get them right, and make sure they are secure.” - Cristina Flaschen, CEO and Co-founder of Pandium.
What is Auth?
In the spirit of APIs and security, Alex pivoted the conversation to Auth. He defined “auth” as “The short word of two different words: authentication and authorization.” He went on to explain that both authentication and authorization are necessary components in creating access to data that is moved between systems and APIs while also building security and protecting against breaches.
Frank further explained that making sure that there is control around what authorization someone has with proofs of authentication is critically important, especially as there are more and more connected experiences across professional and personal lives.
Cristina touched on the importance of correctly utilizing auth to allow integrations to be more readily deployed without creating CX snags when authenticating through an API. She went on to ask the panel for their favorite auth scheme.
Alex chimed in, instead, with his least favorite: basic auth. He explained it as “a human being’s username and password. It's not encrypted.” Given the need for security in today’s API environment, he dismissed the scheme as antiquated.
Frank discussed the use of an API key, a semi-secret means of auth, as a step above basic auth, but still vulnerable as it discloses the key to intermediaries. Cristina went on to talk about OAuth 2.0 which has become somewhat of an industry standard in an industry that eschews standards.
Integrations vs. APIs
The panel then turned to the topic of integrations, and Alex was quick to point out that an API is not an integration in and of itself. Instead, APIs can be considered one of the building blocks of an integration. As mentioned before, APIs serve as the “language” or means of communication between different software and apps.
They provide the tools needed for software to request data and other digital assets from each other. Alex defined integrations as the automation of the flow of information to create a connected experience.
“It's about solving problems and automating things so that people can focus on the stuff that really matters. That to me is integration.” - Alex Savage, Head of Integrations at Advanced
Frank went on to describe integrations as an outcome that somebody wants to see achieved. For example, an outcome in this situation could mean creating ways for two systems or two ecosystems to play together in a way that doesn't force the consumer of that integration to do the heavy lifting.
Cristina then defined a “technically elegant” integration as one that does complex, technical things to solve business problems, while at the same time providing a simple experience for the end consumer of that integration when it comes to set up, configuration, and maintenance.
“When you're not asking your customers to think of set up, configurations, and maintenance of integrations, and instead doing this on their behalf, that's where you get the really beautiful, seamless sort of interoperability.” - Cristina Flaschen, CEO & Co-Founder of Pandium
Overall the panel presented integrations as a means of simplifying the customer experience by creating interoperability that enhances the use case for existing products. At their core, this interoperability allows organizations to capture synergies between technologies in order to improve the quality of information available to users while reducing churn.
Cristina stressed the importance of integrations revolving around the question, “What are you trying to do?” She pointed out that being conversant in the use case will not only make communication easier with the product or integration team, but will also boost the confidence of the prospect or customer.
Achieving confidence and buy-in around integrations
In moving the conversation forward, Frank offered his perspective on how to achieve more confidence and buy-in around integrations. He suggested having discussions with product and engineering teams within your organizations to become well versed in the type of integrations or APIs you have available.
“An API is like a promise and an integration is also a promise that two things will work better together. Think about them like a product and potentially one you could also sell and speak about as a product or sub-capability within your ecosystem.” - Frank Kilcommins, API Technical Evangelist at SmartBear.
Wrap Up/Key Takeaways
If you're interested in more resources to learn about integrations and APIs, check out this list of resources our panelists put together for the event attendees.
If you're interested in hearing the full discussion, watch the full recording here, and apply to become a member of the SaaS Ecosystem Alliance to network with 1100+ product, partnerships, and engineering leaders working on building SaaS ecosystems.
