Together, how are we going to get to $1.5B in partner sales? Telstra Vantage Day 1

Day 1 of Vantage 2018 is the Partner Day.

With over 250 partners attending in sunny (6 degree) Melbourne, it’s the biggest Partner Day at Vantage ever! It’s my second year at Vantage, and again, the Cloud Collective is well represented by Myself (Antares), Mark (Quorum), Craig (Modality) and Eric (Cloud Collective).

Partner Day 2018 is MC’d by Nevash Pillay, Telstra Global Partner Sales Executive. We’ve been lucky enough to catch up over a drink with Nevash in Washington DC at Microsoft Inspire 2017, and she’s an awesome leader, speaking and person generally. Interestingly, I found out this morning that she’s also an accomplished mechanic!

“We’re half way through a renovation” – that was the message from Nevash. There’s a huge investment currently being made by Telstra into digital transformation of traditional Telstra offerings. A number of those offerings are being launched at Vantage this year – the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come!

Telstra’s undergone another big strategic shift in the last few months.

Brendon Riley, Group Executive – Telstra Enterprise, spoke to the partners and outlined the 3 core strategic focusses over the next 12 months:

1. Digitisation: A fundamental shift in both the internal systems and the external market offerings for customers (the first of which will be launched at Vantage this week)
2. Simplification: A simplification of the management structure to streamline the organisation
3. Network: A focus on the development and roll-out of the next generation 5G network.

I’m big on numbers, three that stuck out to me today from both the summary of FY18 and the plan for FY19 were the following:

• 75% of Telstra sales include 3 or more products
• Up to 24,000 orders are processed through Telstra each month
• A target of $1.5B in partner driven sales revenue through the partner channel by 2021

Together, how are we going to get to $1.5B in partner sales together?

The key message for channel partners like the Cloud Collective from Partner Day was “One Team”. Nevash highlighted that the channel is more important to Telstra than 12 months ago as the business continues to transform from a telco into a tech company.

Craig Meiring, Account Director, Asia Pacific – Modality Systems & Cloud Collective was invited to speak in a Partner Day session called “On the Couch with our Product Channel Panel”.

Modality & the Cloud Collective is a leading Telstra partner for Telstra Calling for Office 365 (TCO 365). TCO 365 gives CxOs driving a cloud first strategy a compelling solution for UC. Craig commented that “like any new products, there are pains to work through, but customers are happy with TCO 365”.

Through the Cloud Collective, “TCO 365 also gives us the opportunity to discuss other key cloud workloads with customers, such as Azure”, said Craig. As a result, TCO 365 isn’t just an opportunity to talk about point solutions, it’s a chance to influence, drive and assist with the implementation of an organisation’s technology roadmap.

As partners, we’re being asked to engage with the Telstra account teams, align with the specialists and work collaboratively to deliver value to our customers. Because at the end of the day the focus MUST be customer success; a focus on cloud services + managed services on top of the traditional Telstra platforms.

How would I sum up Vantage Day 1?

In 1 word, “Opportunity”. We’ve got a real opportunity that’s here right now through the Telstra partner channel to deliver real and lasting value for our customers!

Bring on Day 2!