Three years on from the introduction of the Dynatrace Partner Program, I’m excited to share with you a significant, evolutionary step in our Partner Program – the introduction of the Dynatrace Partner Competency Program.
The Competency Program serves to recognize and promote partners that attain deep technical certifications and have achieved proven customer success in specific use cases and technology domains. As a result, the Competency Program represents a considerable opportunity for partners to grow their services business by differentiating their offerings through advanced certifications combined with vetted and validated real-world customer implementations.
But before we get into the program details, I want to briefly share with you the insights, context, and drivers behind the introduction of the Competency Program.
Certifications drive revenue, evolving customer appetite
In 2017 we introduced the Dynatrace Partner Program, a three-tier program with sales and technical enablement. A key focus area of technical enablement was the mandatory requirement for Dynatrace University ‘Associate’ level certifications.
Analysis shared during our recent Digital Partner Summit highlighted that the partners with higher numbers of Associate Level certifications were responsible for an overwhelming and disproportionately large percentage of Dynatrace deal registrations, product sales, and by virtue, pull-through sales of their own partner services.
In parallel, through the expanding breadth of capabilities supported by the Dynatrace platform, our customers have increased their demand and appetite for partners services.
Introducing the Dynatrace Partner Competency Program
It’s against this backdrop of customer demand for technical expertise and breadth of platform capability that we have launched the Dynatrace Partner Competency Program. Sitting within, and complementing, the overarching Partner Program the competency program is engineered to add a deep layer of technical enablement and certification that readies our partners to successfully deliver projects that accelerate customer success.
The Competency Program recognizes and promotes Dynatrace partners that prime themselves with advanced technical knowledge in the form of Dynatrace University ‘Professional’ level certifications, combined with Dynatrace validated customer implementations.
The Competencies have been engineered to align with current and predicted customer needs. Once a Competency is achieved, partners can build further differentiation through ‘Specializations’ which are attained when a partner has demonstrated customer implementations around specific technology platforms or operating environments and holds top tier partner status with the platform vendor.
Earning competencies
The Intelligent Observability Competency is the entry point into the program for all partners globally and covers mainstream Dynatrace SaaS and Managed deployments. Partners in the U.S.A working on Government projects must also achieve the Government competency, which includes Managed Offline deployments.
After successfully attaining the Intelligent Observability Competency, partners can choose to attain additional competencies based on their skills, experience, and market focus.
Competency program benefits
Holding competencies is a key competitive differentiator our partners can leverage. Knowing that a partner has undergone rigorous vetting and detailed verification provides customers with assurance. As such, partners that attain competencies will continue to win a disproportionate volume of product and services business.
To help customers find partners with the technical experience and customer success that matches their requirements, we will launch the new Partner Locator module as part of the new Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platform investment. Competency partners will benefit from priority placement to showcase their capabilities, solutions, services, and experience.
Competency partners are immediately able to utilize Competency badges across their services collateral and company assets, as well as being able to promote attained competencies on social media via the existing social badging service we utilize for individual’s certifications.
Summary & next steps
The launch of the new Dynatrace Partner Competency Program represents a significant step in our journey together. There is clear causation (not correlation!) that partners who invest in certifications and enablement generate the highest ROI from their relationship with Dynatrace. And Partners that embrace the Partner Competency Program will further amplify that ROI and deliver customer success that exceeds expectations. These are exciting times with unbelievable opportunities for our partners and we look forward to you getting started.
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