MAIA Intelligence: Adding Social Media Benefits

MAIA Intelligence is a 100% channel driven company with partnership for consulting, OEM, and resellers. The company works with its partners to jointly capitalize the BI market globally. MAIA offers global and local partnership categories for every strategic business area and customer need in all market segments. So no matter what their area of expertise is, partners can have an opportunity to grow their business by aligning with MAIA. As an MAIA partner, they can participate at varying levels of commitment from far-reaching global alliances to local, industry-specific collaborations. Each category of partners can rely on MAIA for intensive, back-office marketing and sales support, technical services, training, and certification opportunities. Regardless of business size, type, or focus area, the MAIA Partner Program offers resources to help partners meet their business objectives.

The company appoints 3-4 partners per year based on strict qualification criteria in place to have right collaboration. The partnership proposals are based on parameters like functional and technical strength, database know-how, geographic presence, domain expertise, niche focus, etc.

CHANNEL ECOSYSTEMS

MAIA's channel partners are spread across the country and around the world for product implementation, customer support, and services, OEM partners for bundling 1KEY BI with their software and resellers for selling 1KEY licenses. The alliance is categorized into 3 primary programs based on area of expertise. Each program is divided into 3 levels, based on geography and the scope of relationship with the partner. Each MAIA alliance member meets the same high standards of market knowledge, vision, integrity, and customer satisfaction that MAIA sets for itself.

At MAIA, there are 3 key categories of partners, viz, consulting, reseller and OEM. The company has signed-up more than 50 partners in the above mentioned categories. Some of them are Nelito Systems, Soham Computers, Kale Consultants, Agile Financial Technologies, Sapphire Infocom, Paramatrix Technologies, ParthInfotech, Mondial IT, Inode Technologies, TekmindzSamin, Ambit Software, Datamatics Global, Novasoft IT (UK), TriTrac Technologies, S&S Infotech Services, Prism Informatics, Religare Technologies, INS Infotec Solutions, among others. The company has acquired more than 300 customers till date and its corporate customers have 30,000 1KEY users.

MAIA is successful in business activities, partner sign-up and customer acquisition in the US, UK, South East Asia, Africa and Middle East. The company holds partners' right from sales to post-implementation stage. In case partners are stuck on the POC or an implementation, it helps partners with technical know-how and industry standard best practices. As its alliance members, partners can achieve greater market exposure and expand their business and revenue opportunities through its wide and growing customer base.

Partners related program

and initiatives

The company has invested a lot in sales activities like event sponsorships, organizing own events, conducting multi-city events jointly with partners, etc. These events are typically CIO/CFO/CEO standard events wherein partners can start networking with delegates and take maximum advantage from such investments. Apart from regular customer centric events, the company also conducts partner meets wherein partners are awarded for their performance. In addition to this, it gives online training, webinars on new versions, etc, to partners. The company has also started a public social media platform with BI-Group on LinkedIn, specifically for BI community. It has now around 40,000 members.

MAIA has also created 1KEY page on Facebook specifically for customers, partners, and future prospects. It uses such platforms to communicate with partners and vice versa, but partners can also leverage themselves and their positioning using such platforms. MAIA encourages all its partners and customers and prospects to join this BI-Group and participate in discussions. Over time, MAIA Intelligence and its partners, together, will evolve with partnering through such mechanisms.

MAIA's BI blog is one of the best blogs in the industry focusing on all aspects of crucial BI and data warehousing (DW) knowledge. The blog's content reflects its mission to educate business and IT professionals about the array of technologies and disciplines required to deliver valuable insight to business users and help organizations operate more intelligently.

"We strongly believe in channel strategy and will continue working with partners. By doing this, we are successful in establishing ourselves in BI space. Since the establishment of MAIA Intelligence, we have been following this channel strategy of working only with partners just because we want to stay focused on the product development, product enhancements and marketing," said Hiten Rathod, head, strategic alliances and channels, MAIA Intelligence.

Secondly, MAIA Intelligence is purely a product company and not a domain expert in all aspects of every sector of industry. Therefore, it works together with partners that specialize in specific industrial sectors: banking, manufacturing, healthcare, etc, and disciplines. Partners are able to support 1KEY in improving its software, by providing detailed reports on experiences gained along with previous implementations. All its partners have their own specific area of specialization. Each concentrates on a certain sector of industry and/or certain solutions, and each stands out on account of an individual approach. This helps customers achieve significant RoI which leads to partner's success.

The company believes in the exponential growth with partners. MAIA Intelligence grows as the partners grow. Partners play a vital role in its corporate strategy; partners are highly qualified and their functional and technical expertise help to better serve the customer and ensure customers' success. The combination of partners and MAIA software solution aids the organization and the partners' growth, is a win-win relationship for both.

Partners program

The combined expertise, experience, and insights of the MAIA ecosystem and partner network lead to better solutions for our customers. As an MAIA partner, partner can tap into resources that will help them grow and maximize business results. Partnering with MAIA puts the strength of one of the most successful, respected software brands behind them. After upgrading to one of MAIA's 4 partner categories, partners interact with many professionals globally in the company's ecosystem. Its channel manager program ensures that each partner receives appropriate MAIA support resources, including sales, marketing, and business planning assistance, specific business opportunities, online collaboration tools, and technical support. The company is dedicated to ensuring that partners have tools and information to succeed.

Value proposition and

partner's benefits

Sustaining business profitability is critical to partner's long-term success. The MAIA Partner Program helps support partner's profitability goals by providing the tools and resources they need at every stage of the business cycle which includes evaluation software, expert support, incentives, newsworthy articles and announcements about products and initiatives, lead generation, sales demonstrations, training, discover new opportunities to help drive revenue today.

Partner rating, certifications

and accreditation

It has a partner point model, where it monitors the performance of the partners and accordingly rate them based on the revenues generated, sales and technical resources deployed for BI software solutions. The rating are not only based on meeting sales targets but also on number of meetings done, number of demonstrations and number of successful POCs and maximum closures. It is then followed by certifications, which are based on the qualification criteria and accordingly respective partner levels are given to partners. The MAIA Intelligence Global Partnership Program offers 4 levels of partnerships-MAIA Partner entry level program membership; MAIA Certified Partners (second level of program membership), MAIA Premium Partners (third level of program membership) and MAIA Global Partners (highest level of program membership)-with increasing benefits at each successive level that means partners can join at a level that aligns with their business strategies. They can leverage their membership to help expand their skills, increase opportunities, finalize more sales, and support customers.

Based on the membership level, partners receive a set of program resources that support all stages of their business cycle from business planning to customer retention. Program resources vary by membership level and include innovative marketing tools and services, internal use MAIA software licenses, technical and sales support resources, and comprehensive sales and technical skills training. Under the program, one needs to qualify and move up in membership level by earning partner points.

Program enrollment requirements vary by level. As partners progress to higher membership levels, they receive incremental resources based on their increased participation in the program. Global partners, for example, must meet most rigorous requirements, and in return, earn the highest level of resources offered through the MAIA Partner Program. Once enrolled in the MAIA Partner Program, their organization can move up in membership level sequentially or move directly from partner member to global partner level by meeting the appropriate program-level requirements.

Training

As soon as the partner formally signs up and is engaged with MAIA, "We schedule partner sales and technical training at MAIA office. The training duration is of 5 days which covers product architecture, features and functionalities, report designing and development, troubleshooting, and mock POCs," added Rathod.

Partner's roadmap

While the concept and activity of partner-to-partner networking, reselling vendor products and adding services are not new, the evolution of social media technology has created new platforms and opportunities. The wave of new technology, social media, and online collaboration in recent years has made it easier for channel partners to find one another and build a relationship. It is great that this is happening organically. "As part of the MAIA's Global Partnership Program, we plan to create a formal partner networking group with a secure environment for the partners to use. The partners can share intellectual property they may have created, connect with one another, get answers to questions, and so on. The partner portal shall provide partner locator or directory like tools that can be easily used for partners to find one another. Additionally, our partner conferences create opportunities for partners to meet in person. The partner portal shall allow publishing their company's profile on the partner locator, which makes it easy for other partners to find them," concluded Rathod.