Alteryx Sees Channel Momentum Following Partner Program Revamp

Analytics automation platform provider forecasts cloud growth in 2023 after partner recruitment and enablement push this year.

Alteryx channel partners influenced “well over half” of the annual contract value in the company’s third quarter and the analytics automation platform provider recorded double-digit growth year-over-year in partner accounts contributing one or more deals.

The growth follows the company’s moves earlier this year to revamp its channel program and shift its go-to-market strategy to a more partner-centric approach.

“We’ve really leaned in as a company to that partner-centric strategy. We have put resources across the business to support the partner,” said Barb Huelskamp (pictured), Alteryx senior vice president of global partners and alliances, in an interview with CRN. She cited the additional training and enablement, marketing and sales engineering resources and financial incentives the company now provides partners, along with increased help desk resources through distributors such as TD Synnex and public sector master VAR Carahsoft.

[Related: Alteryx President Hansen: Customers’ Need For Data Analytics Outweighs Economic Uncertainties]

Alteryx is a leading vendor in the big data analytics space with its Alteryx Analytics Automation Platform that provides data ETL and preparation capabilities, data science and machine learning functionality, and data analysis and reporting tools. The company, based in Irvine, Calif., has been selling more of its software for enterprise-scale implementations – a change that puts greater emphasis on partners’ service capabilities and their domain and vertical industry expertise.

The company launched a significant expansion of its partner program in March and has been working with more of what it describes as its “pillar” partner types: solution providers, global systems integrators, technology partners and OEMs. Today the company has hundreds of partners globally, Huelskamp said.

One long-time partner is Data Meaning Services Group, a Boca Raton, Fla-based data and analytics consulting firm that resells Alteryx software and provides professional and systems integration services around the platform. Co-founder and managing partner Marvin Mayorga, in an interview with CRN, said his company has strategic alliances with a number of vendors in the data management and analytics space, but the Alteryx relationship is probably the most important because of the wide range of use cases for the Alteryx platform.

“We really do believe that the industry hasn‘t even really scratched the surface in terms of all the various uses that they could have for Alteryx within their organization,” Mayorga said. “We just believe that it’s one of the platforms out there that has the largest growth potential because of that.”

Mayorga also cited the Alteryx culture and how it works with its partners – even preceding this year’s partner program overhaul. “Out of all of the strategic partnerships that we work with, from a culture perspective…Alteryx is by far the number-one best culture that we‘ve worked with, the relationships that they have with their partnerships, the friendly environment that they create. There’s just a lot more positive energy going around.”

Partner Recruitment

This year Alteryx has established additional solution provider and systems integrator partnerships including Presidio, Protiviti and SHI in the Americas, Billigence and Polestar in the APAC region, and KPMG UK and Horvath & Partner GmbH in Europe.

In Late November Alteryx unveiled an alliance with IT consulting services provider EY through which EY will provide clients with the Alteryx technology combined with its expertise for data exploration and analysis in such areas as tax preparation, finance, human resources, supply chain management, internal auditing and IT management.

Alteryx has also been expanding a long-time relationship with IT services provider PwC and has a close technology partnership with data cloud provider Snowflake.

“We’re seeing higher growth and bigger deal sizes,” Huelskamp said. While Alteryx doesn’t disclose its direct-indirect sales split, the company reported that in its third quarter (ended Sept. 30) it saw more than 120 percent year-over-year growth in business influenced by technology partners – Alteryx’s listing on the Snowflake Marketplace being one such driver.

Resellers, co-sellers and reference sell partners influenced “well over half” of the annual contract value won in the quarter, according to an Alteryx statement, and the company reported double-digit growth in partner accounts contributing one or more deals.

Alteryx continues to recruit additional partners in the Americas and partners with data analysis and cloud transformation skills – Presidio being a prime example – as well as partners with expertise in specific line-of-business tasks like finance and supply chain, Huelskamp said.

Channel Neutrality

One significant aspect of the partner program overhaul was the establishment of clearer rules of engagement for partners and Alteryx sales representatives.

“When you transact more with partners, you come across more scenarios of how we work together,” Huelskamp said. “One iteration of the program this year was continuing to spell out our rules of engagement. When you have multiple partners in an opportunity, how are we going to work together? We are continuing to optimize the new opportunity management functionality in our PRM [partner relationship management system] as we continue to improve the partner experience.”

“That‘s just another example of how I feel like we’ve succeeded so far this year,” the channel chief said. “We‘re not done and we’ll continue to iterate not just how else we feel we can improve, but actuate the feedback from partners, in particular from the partner advisory councils.”

Mayorga at Data Meaning Services Group cited Alteryx’s implementation of a channel-neutral compensation plan to reduce potential channel conflict and spur improved cooperation between Alteryx sales representatives and partners as a major advance. “The compensation that partners receive is in alignment with a collaborative culture of working with our [joint] customers,” he said.

He also praised Alteryx for bringing partners into potential deal opportunities earlier in the sales cycle and for developing packaged offerings and implementation blueprints that assist partners in sales situations. But he said Alteryx has to work harder to educate new sales representatives about the value that partners bring to the table.

“I really do feel like we‘ve delivered on the commitments that we made to partners at the start of the year,” Huelskamp said. “Alteryx has really leaned into that partner-centric model, investing across our business to support partner growth. Our partner programs offer them increased benefits earlier in their investment journey with Alteryx and the analytics market. We have tapped less than 10 percent of the market. So partners have an unsaturated market with Alteryx that can drive top-line revenue and profitability.”

Cloud Momentum

Alteryx has been making a concerted push to expand sales of its analytics products that work in the cloud: At the company’s annual user conference in May Alteryx launched a number of cloud-enabled software and unveiled enhanced integrations between its platform and Databricks, Snowflake and Google BigQuery cloud data warehouses.

Alteryx has been holding regional partner enablement events, including one in Denver earlier this year, that provide training around those cloud capabilities. “Well over 100 partners [were] in attendance. We focused on enabling them on the new cloud elements of our analytics platform,” Huelskamp said of the Denver event.

The channel chief sees momentum for partner sales for the cloud in 2023.

“I would expect that our partner-attach in cloud will start to accelerate,” she said. “Our partners have been working in the cloud, have a strong cloud acumen, have subject matter expertise there across other technologies. And I feel like that‘s an exciting area of growth for us through our partners.

“We‘ll continue on with pipeline generation – how can we continue to acquire new customers together?” she said. “We do a lot of strategic account mapping. We have a partner marketing team and we are driving campaigns and initiatives and co-funding those, as you would expect, with our partners to help them drive new pipeline.”