The big announcement about our new Services Delivery Program generated major buzz at Citrix Summit 2017. Partners heard from VP Hector Lima and VP Craig Stilwell about the huge opportunity to deliver services – and how Citrix is enabling partner success with training, prepackaged delivery kits, Citrix Consulting intellectual property and a new certification.
Now that Citrix has provided the broad outlines of the Services Delivery initiative, let’s go deeper into the program’s components, timelines, and requirements. Also, let’s talk more about how services delivery can directly – and positively — impact product sales and customer satisfaction.
[Related: Check out the Services Delivery Resource page on Citrix SalesIQ]
Program Overview
The two components of the program are Services Delivery Kits and the Certified Services Delivery Partner. They are both important to your success, and although certification is optional, it’s a major asset with multiple advantages for your brand, competitive position, and profitability.
You should start aiming for certification from the beginning.
Services Delivery Kits
The kits align with Citrix Consulting’s five-part methodology of Strategy, Migrate, Adopt, Manage, Optimize and contain proprietary intellectual property that is being offered to partners for the first time to encourage services collaboration, not competition.
The kits are carefully targeted at the needs of customers in the mid-market, emerging markets, and underserved sectors.
Their objective is repeatability, so customers receive a consistently high level of service in a pre-determined timeframe (from one to eight weeks, depending on the kit).
Once you purchase these moderately priced kit, you’ll unlock all the benefits of that offering for a specified timeframe.
Kits include the following:
- How-to training (eLearning) focused on engaging customers, executing services and driving additional revenue
- “Best of” documentation specific to each service, such as scope documents, customer deliverables, templates, white papers and scripts
- Best-in-class tool for managing your project
- Remote assistance from Citrix Consulting to help answer your questions or solve design challenges
- Marketing support from Citrix to promote the value of engaging with partners that are delivering these kits
These offerings will regularly be revised to include product updates and new product lines.
The first kits, covering Workspace Services (Virtualization) and Cloud, will be made available to the Americas in Q2, to EMEA in the second half of the year and to APJ in Q1 2018. Meanwhile, we’ll be adding kits for Networking, Enterprise File Sync/Sharing, and Security.
Certification
Earning the Certified Services Delivery Partner credential is highly recommended because it comes with:
- Priority listing on Partner Locator and other types of Citrix marketing
- Price reduction on kits
- Credits for favorable net promoter scores (NPS)
- Eligibility to join the Consulting Virtual Bench
Besides completing required eLearning courses and passing the certification exam, partners must deliver three kits with a favorable NPS (9 or 10). But we’re giving you some leeway on that third piece, so you can begin accessing certification benefits, such as the logo, as soon as possible.
Once you meet the first two requirements, you’ll have six months to deliver those three kits with favorable scores so you can receive all benefits.
Citrix global partners will be eligible to earn certification starting in Q2.
Why sell and deliver services?
That brings us to the point about the direct linkage between services delivery and customer satisfaction.
After all, it just makes sense that a customer would prefer a partner with the ability to expertly deliver both solutions and services, for a complete offering.
There’s plenty of evidence that customers want a single source for their IT needs, rather than multiple vendors.
We’ve found that Citrix customers who use services are much more likely to purchase additional product licenses or add new products – often because the services provider has shown them opportunities to expand into new use cases, take better advantage of key features, and achieve system stability and top performance.
Get ready for services delivery
As we roll out the new program and certification path, I encourage you to pre-register to receive regular updates.
I hope you’ll take full advantage of this upcoming opportunity to establish or expand your services delivery capabilities and credentials.
Check out the newly available resources on Citrix SalesIQ. New! Check out Craig Stilwell’s blog for an updated announcement!
