A new era of growth: How the Zoom partner ecosystem is evolving

In March, we kicked off our new fiscal year and like with any new beginning, we spent a lot of time reflecting on the past and planning for the future. To keep pace with the rapid innovation of our AI-powered collaboration platform, we’re also placing even more emphasis on our partner relationships to help us reach new customers, serve more markets, and implement world-class solutions.

As the head of global channels and alliances, I’m thrilled to lead our team and seize the wealth of opportunities that will help amplify our ecosystem. To be successful, we rely heavily on our partnerships, which is why we’ve prioritized investments in our team and tools that will support our partners in this year's new era of growth. 

By evolving our Zoom Up Partner Program, expanding our platform with innovative solutions, and providing robust partner incentives, we’ve adopted a partner-first mindset that is the foundation for driving expansion in the channel. I’m excited about the year ahead and enhancing the collective strength of our partners as we go to market with ground-breaking solutions across the Zoom platform.

So, what does this mean for you?

To show our commitment to helping our partners succeed, we’ve increased our partner-facing resources to create better alignment throughout our organization. To date, we have dozens of open positions in our channel organization and anticipate having these resources filled and onboarded by the end of April 2024. 

We’re also introducing new enablement tools and systems that are designed to make working together easier and accelerate the quoting and ordering process. We’re removing barriers by simplifying onboarding and streamlining deal registration to give you the support, resources, and opportunities you need to thrive in today's competitive landscape.

The speed of Zoom is more than just a tagline we use internally; it’s a representation of the rate at which we launch new features and solutions that our users expect, and prefer. This expansion of the platform is anchored by our AI capabilities. Not only do we believe this provides you with growth potential, but that it can help position you to sell into new and growing markets through the expansion of several core products, including: 

• Video conferencing (Zoom Meetings)
• UCaaS (Zoom Phone) 
• CCaaS (Zoom Contact Center) 
• Conversation intelligence (Zoom Revenue Accelerator) 
• AI chatbot/assistant (Zoom Virtual Assistant)
• AI Companion 

What’s more, industry validation of our strength is hitting full stride, with recent awards from G2 (ranked in top 5 out of 50 Best Collaboration and Productivity Products) and CX Today (Highly Commended for Midmarket Contact Center and Use of AI), further highlighting the depth of the Zoom platform. 

In addition to product offerings, we are committed to driving professional services and partner-delivered support contracts. By investing in these areas, we aim to provide our partners with additional revenue streams and deliver even greater value to our customers.

With remote and hybrid work becoming the norm, the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) markets represent a massive area for growth potential. The need for cloud-based, reliable, and scalable solutions has never been greater and provides numerous opportunities for companies to capitalize on this demand.

Because we rely heavily on our partners to drive the expansion of our UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, we’ve realigned our strategy to bring us closer together. Our new single, go-to-market teams will join all of the Zoom sales motions in each of the regions to help streamline collaboration between our partners, customers, and teammates. We believe this unified approach will enhance the potential success of our partners.

Your success fuels our success. That’s why we’re unveiling a new and improved partner program to empower you and reward your investments. What I like to call the ‘next evolution of Zoom,’ Zoom Up provides a robust value exchange of increased rewards that are well-suited to complement your investments in training, selling, and practice development, and can help you differentiate and build your Zoom business. This program continues our commitment to referral transaction partners and opens up exciting possibilities for resellers, distributors, services-only partners, and more. 

Zoom is making a true commitment with enhanced incentives, including: 

• Up to 10X MRR SPIF for referral transactions
• Up to 20% rebate for resale transactions
• Deal registration kickers
• Transaction-level rebates
• Practice-level rebates

Designed to streamline collaboration, drive growth, and reward excellence, the Zoom Up Partner Program provides you with the tools and incentives you need to succeed. 

(Explore our partnerships and learn more about Zoom Up here)

We’re firm believers of working smarter, not harder, so in addition to more resources and increased headcount, we’re working to make it easier for you to find what you need and experience the success you deserve. By revamping our programs and providing new tools and resources, we want to help make it more simple, predictable, and lucrative to do business with us in the following ways:

• Drive the customer lifecycle from the initial sale through implementation, added services, and renewals with our services-based approach to partner value
• Refreshed competencies program to build a true practice around Zoom
• Revamped deal management tool interface and news deal dashboard for better visibility into your deal lifecycle

As we embark on this exciting new era of growth, I am confident that our collective efforts will help propel Zoom to new heights of success. By embracing every partner, opportunity, person, and voice within our ecosystem, we can unlock new possibilities and drive meaningful change for our customers and communities. 

Come learn what this could mean for you and how to maximize your partnership with Zoom. We’ll be at 2024 Channel Partners Expo next week, and Enterprise Connect, where we’d love to have you as a guest. 

Not yet a partner? Learn more at https://partner.zoom.us/. Together, we can shape the future of communication, collaboration, and customer experience.

*Note: AI Companion may not be available for all regions and industry verticals.