Global Touch: A Partner-Focused Approach and Go-To Consulting Firm for Business Transformation

What do Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Amazon Web Services, UIPath, Splunk, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and other top technology companies have in common?  They continue to scale revenues through partners and partner ecosystems.

“We offer straight talk with clients. We have the courage to deliver tough message—what they need to hear and not what they want to hear.”

Today, more than 70% of all business revenues are generated for technology companies by their partners.  It is the secret weapon that is often overlooked by executive management and filled with complexities.  How do you get it right and build what every IT company CEO craves—predictable growth, revenue, and profit from partner sales?  Global Touch, Inc., one of this year’s Most Influential Companies of 2020, has mastered this formula and has spent the last 30 years helping top technology companies worldwide gain 360° of alignment, acceleration, and predictability from its partners.

Since the early days of the PC industry, Global Touch has concentrated on the alignment between IT companies, partners, and customers around the world.  The early years of the PC industry found American technology companies formulating exclusive or limited distribution agreements with partners outside of the US. Before websites, global support centers, and IT country operations (outside of America) were created, these partners were effectively on their own and offered various technical and professional services to local business customers and brand development for the IT companies they represented. IT is a different picture today.

Today, IT companies generally have a direct presence in most global markets and have a range of partnerships from a classic reselling partner, “white label” or embedded (licensing) relationships, implementation partners, cloud marketplaces, to many more. The key to success with partners and ecosystems is to find the “DNA” that matches or aligns with the IT companies’ DNA and then work toward building a predictable partnership around value with business customers.

Building repeatable success with partners is no easy task, but the rewards for those who get it right can be significant.  Global Touch’s partner-focused strategy and go-to-market transformation consulting firm for the hybrid and digital computing environment has helped its clients achieve unparalleled success.

“The journey to building partner revenue is always filled with twists and turns, like a roller coaster,” said Denise Sangster, President, and CEO of Global Touch. For Sangster, building partner repeatable success was just one of her initial challenges; being an American woman added an extra layer.  “In my earlier year, several male colleagues running EMEA and APAC organizations for American IT companies told me they did not need an “American girl” to help them with their local businesses. I took this bias as a challenge to win them over, and most became peers and advocates for our work.  Some became clients and most became lifelong friends,” said Sangster.

“Everyone you meet along the way reshapes and adds fuel to your journey.  As a woman working globally, I have been afforded many unique opportunities that my male colleagues were not.  For example, I have spent many evenings and weekends with industry colleagues and their families in their homes and attending their or their children’s weddings.  I was a novelty and many of these men wanted their children and wives to meet me,” said Sangster.

Sangster’s company approach combines in-field experience, continuous research, extensive global contacts, hundreds of years’ experience across her team, and data storytelling to bring the pulse of business at its clients’ fingertips.

“Our products and services are continually changing to align with market dynamics for today and where we believe it will be in three years.  Today, the IT industry is focused on customer lifecycle success. We are working on the complementary partner profit journey to energize this customer approach.” Sangster added, “this new profit journey for partners is an inflection point; a truly game-changing moment. And I believe this is the most significant and disruptive change in the IT industry in over 25 years; much more disruptive than the emergence of cloud computing,” added Sangster.

Fun Facts about Denise Sangster, President, and CEO of Global Touch