Fivetran Debuts Enhanced Partner Program To Boost Reseller Sales, International Expansion

The data integration technology developer, with its expanded product portfolio thanks to its HVR acquisition, is adding to its sales and marketing training and certification offerings for partners and providing additional financial incentives to move partners beyond referral sales to reselling Fivetran software.

Logan Welley, Fivetran vice president of alliances

Fivetran is launching an expanded channel program today as the data integration technology developer looks to enlist global systems integrators to help the company expand internationally and encourage current referral partners to adopt reseller sales motions.

The new program comes as Fivetran is gaining momentum in the fast-growing data integration arena thanks to major acquisition one year ago and close relationships with major data cloud service providers.

“This is a maturation of our partner program in a way that we want to incentivize and work with our partners in the ecosystem,” said Logan Welley, Fivetran vice president of alliances, in an interview with CRN.

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“We’ve broadened the incentives to help us drive the best possible customer experiences and customer engagements with our solution providers. We wanted to make sure that our partners ultimately had an opportunity to work with us throughout the entire lifecycle of the customer journey,” Welley (pictured) said.

Fivetran, founded in 2012 and based in Oakland, Calif., develops a number of data integration products including data ETL (extract, transform and load) and connectors. Such tools play a critical role in helping businesses and organizations move data between operational systems such as ERP and CRM applications, databases, and cloud data warehouse and data lake analytical systems.

Gartner says the post-pandemic data integration tools market is seeing renewed momentum “driven by requirements for multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud data integration and data fabric design patterns,” according to a recent Gartner Magic Quadrant Data Integration Tools report. The global market for data integration tools grew 11.8 percent in 2021 (up from 6.8 percent in 2020) to $3.8 billion, according to the report, and Gartner estimates the five-year (2021-2026) CAGR for the market at 8.5 percent.

In October 2021 Fivetran expanded its data integration technology portfolio with its $700 million acquisition of HVR, a developer of high-volume data replication software used in complex, mission-critical systems. “Partners were elated to see the two technologies come together because they offered solution completeness, Welley said.

Fivetran has also established close alliances with the major data cloud service providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure and provides its data integration tools for data migration and data centralization projects. In recent months Fivetran was named Databricks’ Data Ingestion Partner of the Year, the Google Cloud Global Technology Partner of the Year, and the Snowflake Data Integration Partner of the Year.

Fivetran’s original partner program, started in 2018, was geared toward solution providers and regional/boutique systems integrators who provided the company with referral sales. Today the company’s channel and technology partners are involved in just about every customer account and in any given quarter partners are influencing 65 to 75 percent of bookings, Welley said.

Welley said that given the current stage of Fivetran’s growth the company wants to better leverage the deep customer relations many of its solution providers and systems integrator partners have – hence the new program with additional incentives, training and resources that encourage partners to resell Fivetran products.

Fivetran is also looking to leverage the reseller model as the company expands in Latin America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Another driver for the new program is that it brings HVR partners – including some of the industry’s biggest global systems integrators – under a single program umbrella.

“Fivetran’s partner program enhancements will fuel all global partners to accelerate Fivetran’s mission to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity,” said Ryan Bosshart, CEO at phData, a Minneapolis-based data services provider and Fivetran Premier partner, in a statement.

Bosshart said phData’s customers, including Fortune 500 businesses, “need access to uninterrupted, accurate data to succeed. Our collaboration with Fivetran is instrumental in this regard.”

The new four-tier program runs from the entry level Registered tier to the Elite top tier. It offers financial incentives and rewards for resellers, including rewards for selling through online marketplaces.

The program provides technical and sales training and badge certifications, marketing support and sponsorship opportunities, and access to a partner sales engineering team, according to the company.

“We wanted to make sure that our technical community, particularly the solution architects and the delivery teams at our partners, understand all the components of Fivetran,” Welley of the potential use cases for the company’s ETL technology and the HVR replication product. “We wanted to make sure that they understand exactly how the product suite can be positioned and then, ultimately, how to implement it to create the best possible customer experience.”

Fivetran also plans to create regional partner communities designed to foster communication amongst partners and regional partner advisory councils to provide partner feedback to the company, Welley said.

While Fivetran continues to establish new channel partnerships, Welley said that helping current partners step up their game in reselling and technical expertise are the major goals of the new program, rather than large-scale recruitment of new partners.