Providing a superior customer experience (CX) has been a much-hyped business imperative in the age of digitalization. Today, however, we have a newer concept to consider in the technology industry: the partner experience (PX). Specifically, how technology vendors and the indirect channel partners that sell, refer or consult around their products relate to one another – and most importantly how that’s changing. And it is changing.

The primary shift is in the relationship dynamic. The power equation has morphed from one in which vendors held all the cards to one in which partners have more leverage. It’s not adversarial, to be sure, but rather more balanced. For decades, partners have served as extended sales forces for vendors they aligned with and as such were beholden to sets of incentive goals and other requirements in order to move up the ranks of a tiered partner program system of benefits. Today, the balance is much more even and the partner journey more nuanced, which we will cover in this paper.