In April, SAS announced that it had selected Helen Morin as the new VP of Global Alliances and Channels. Previously the Sr. Director of the U.S. region, Helen takes over for Russ Cobb, whose role expanded to include Growth and Business Operations at SAS.
We sat down with Helen to get her perspective on some of the changes taking place at SAS and how partners can leverage SAS’ growth initiatives to grow their own businesses.
(Q1.) Congratulations, Helen, on your new role as VP of SAS Global Alliances and Channels. As you take on leadership of the division, SAS itself is undertaking some fundamental and exciting changes in its strategy and portfolio. 
How have some of those changes impacted the way we partner, and how do you expect them to continue impacting the partner organization?
HM: One of the most critical changes at SAS is our strategic growth initiatives. In this area, we are pulling together cross-functionally the people who will be responsible for working with regional alliance leaders, strategic growth leaders and our partners to identify the ideal fit to take an initiative to market. There is going to be a lot of wood behind that arrow. We are aligning value propositions to each of those growth initiatives that will play within individual market segments, and we will have partners aligned to those value propositions. From there, we’ll drive the enablement required to support those partners that are aligned to the value propositions. We’ll tie all of this together around the SAS three-year rolling plan to grow revenue and profitability, improve the customer experience and secure the future.
(Q2.) You’ve been with SAS now for 22 years and a part of Alliances and Channels for the past 12; how has the nature of partnering at SAS changed during your time here?
HM: When I was in pre-sales we would get together with a partner maybe once a year, and that was normally the technology partners. We’d go have lunch and hear about their offerings; then we may or may not speak to each other again until the next year. SAS was such a self-sufficient company that we could work in the market without a lot of support from anyone else. As we progressed through these years, and I came into alliances working with IBM, I like many came to realize that – even if it felt like we worked independently with the line of business in an account, we don’t. We run on somebody’s infrastructure, somebody’s cloud or somebody’s hardware, and there are subject matter experts and thought leaders who are surrounding our customers and helping them make decisions. Whether we see those partners or not, they are there and they are influencing our opportunities. We see it and we want to proactively engage with all types of partners so that we can give the customer the best experience possible. We don’t want to set the customer up as the one who must negotiate what’s going on in their account across multiple partners to achieve their objective.
(Q3.) Last year, more than 35% of SAS new sales revenue was influenced by partners, and partners influenced nearly 50% of SAS’ largest deals. These numbers are up significantly from even two years ago. How do you continue that momentum?
HM: In May, I participated in Dr. Goodnight’s quarterly employee webcast. I stressed the need for all of SAS to participate in partner enablement. The measurement is not just how many partners are able to speak on SAS’ behalf and integrate our offerings into their own, but to look at KPIs such as pipeline development and our ability to enable partners to drive their success with SAS. Now that we have set off on this journey we are going to be measuring whether or not we’re getting our partners engaged in opportunities. We should see an increase in our partner inclusion in the pipeline … which will then influence the close rate … which will then translate into increased revenue on both sides… which will then translate into larger participation for and with our partners.
(Q4.) How should partners think about the balance of SAS’ core strengths – Fraud, Risk, CI, DM, analytics, and AI – versus its new strengths (IoT, cloud, mid-market) when doing their own business plans?
HM: The good news is that our core strengths are not going away; they are the underpinnings of what we do. Depending on what a partner’s own scope and business model looks like, if they want to grow into some of our solution areas or new offerings, an understanding of our core platform and offerings is critical. We want them to keep those skills fresh, to understand our platform and message, especially Viya, and how that fits into the marketplace. Take the Viya openness message, for instance. If they have accounts where the customer is using Python or R that doesn’t mean they should be dissuaded from using SAS. If they’ve been working with a particular line of business, or in discussion with IT, they can position how Viya can provide the governance for the various pockets of open source code being used around the organization. IT likes that message because – much like when Hadoop started popping up all over the organization and IT was challenged to get their arms around it– Viya is helping them address those challenges. As we bring solutions on top of Viya, we’re creating an efficient platform within an organization so that our partners can land with the SAS platform, but then expand into other solutions. Most of our partners are interested in augmenting with other software they have such as accelerators, or they are interested in services. So the idea of ‘land and expand’ with a robust platform set is very appealing as they continue to add value to the organizations they serve
(Q5.) During Partner Forum in April, many presenters talked about the emphasis SAS is putting on the midmarket and the role of partners in capturing that channel. What should partners expect to see from SAS in respect to mid-market offerings or changes in business processes?
HM: We have deliberate strategies on how we want to go-to-market together in the midmarket segment. For partners who work predominantly in the Enterprise account space with us they may not see much of a change, we have a deliberate sell-with strategy based on the maturity of the market. For the mid-market we are looking at more offerings that are ‘as a service’ whether that is a partner offered Managed Analytics Service (MASP) or SAS offered software-as-a-service, results-as-a-service, remote managed services, or SAS in the cloud with and through partners. As-a-service fits well into mid-market as the customer can quickly achieve results themselves or with additional services being provided to meet their individual needs. Our resell strategy for mid-market helps engage clients that we might otherwise not been able to address. With partners local to the end-use client we can provide education and awareness on the value of analytics to their organization. Large enterprise customers have embraced and recognize the value of analytics in a variety of aspects of their business. There is an amazing opportunity in the midmarket to share that same knowledge to help them realize the benefits of analytics in their companies.
(Q6.) SAS has seen significant growth from its channel program. Do you see continued growth in the channel and what opportunities do you see for those partners?
HM: SAS is definitely growing in the channel. We’ve set a target of 50% growth in the channel this year, but I expect our actual growth to be more than that. The mid-market segment will influence this. In the last two years, we’ve made investments with partners to develop service offerings such as MASPs and xSPs, because of this, partners will find interesting ways to take an offering to market with their intellectual property wrapped around SAS. Additionally we are well aligned with our Inside Sales and Commercial Account Managers to leverage the expertise and reach of our resellers into accounts. Empowering resell partners to position SAS in new areas of an organization that nurtures and cultivates their network is a win-win-win.
(Q7.) Another recurring theme from Partner Forum is the importance of partner enablement. Can you talk a little about the importance of partner enablement and what are some of the ways SAS can improve on this front?
HM: We need to treat our partners like employees, customers AND partners. Each one of those aspects have a distinct flavor. When partners are building a business practice around SAS we want to give them every opportunity to be successful. In so doing the message they deliver is consistent with SAS’ overall brand. Enablement is critical. We had our first meeting with the newly formed Partner Enablement Board and are already seeing changes in what and how we share information with our partners.
(Q8.) Based on your conversation with partners, what’s one thing about SAS or one benefit of our partner program that partners are surprised to learn?
HM: I have more than one; three things come to mind. Access to our R&D organization, participation in some of our advisory boards or even the ability to leverage our Executive Briefing Centers to bring their customers to SAS to experience firsthand our commitment to the customer and to the partner.
(Q9.) We’re certainly at a very exciting and pivotal moment in time for SAS and the way it works with partner organizations. What are your priorities for the next 12 months?
HM: Partner enablement, the growth of our strategic growth initiatives – as redundant as that may sound! – and efficiencies. Not just efficiencies for SAS Alliances and Channels, but make us more efficient for our partners to work with. How long does it take for us to get contracts out the door? How long does it take to get a quote? How long does it take to get an image stood up? How long does it take to fill out an opportunity registration form? If we can streamline these things and take away the administrivia we can focus our joint efforts on solving customer’s business challenges with our combined software and services.
(Q10.) What are we going to do differently?
HM: Besides the growth initiatives and the partner enablement board, we’re going to look at how we do launches differently. Launches of software. Launches of services bundles. Launches of channel offerings and midmarket. We’ll look at this so that we can get more feedback from our partners as we’re getting ready to roll things out, a ready for release stamp of approval if you will. We’ll also pull input from our partner advisory board and together, we’ll streamline some of this feedback to touch the mid-market, the enterprise and the channel, so that when we put out an offer where the opportunities for our partners is known and planned for.
