PTC GLOBAL PARTNER SUMMIT — Top PTC executive buy-in is vital to retaining current PTC Advantage Network partners, as well as attracting new partners, as the company rapidly transforms from its CAD, PLM (project life-cycle management) and SLM (service life-cycle management) heritage to the IoT and augmented reality (AR) space.

That’s what attendees heard today at PTC’s first Global Partner Summit, held in Boston, ahead of this week’s LiveWorx 2017.

“Three keys to partner success are executive commitment, a clear go-to-market segmentation model and a strong financial model for partners to make money,” said Kerry Grimes, senior vice president, worldwide channel sales. And top executives are looking at everything the company does from a partner perspective.

Grimes, who is responsible for channel partners, pointed out how one of the key pillars for improving PTC’s sales distribution strategy is expanding its channel-partner network. In 2014, the company had less than 900 sales reps, compared to the 1,300 in place today. In 2014, channel partners contributed less than 25 percent to the company’s overall bookings; today, that number has increased to more than one third.

PTC says it is committed to bringing together its direct and indirect partners, including at Monday’s Global Partner Summit. Partners got a preview of the soon to be released Thingworx 8.

The vendor also announced that it’s revamping its PTC Advantage Network to a single program from the current three programs: ChannelAdvantage, PartnerAdvantage and ServicesAdvantage. PTC has a mix of partner types: software resellers; and hardware, software and service partners.{ad}

The company is transforming how it sells, moving from perpetual to subscription licensing, which drives an annuity business for partners.

The developer community, 15,000 strong and growing, now has access to a new developer portal. In one year, the number of Thingworx IoT solution builders grew by more than 90 percent and the Thingworx Marketplace expanded — with much of the content coming from partners.

Matt Cohen, executive vice president, customer success, talked about the company’s service partners and the role they play and value they drive in physical to digital convergence.

“There was a time when we tried to go direct with services. Not any longer — and we do substantially more business,” he said. PTC offers …

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… advisory, implementation, cloud, adoption, support, advocacy and success-management services.

In the IoT space, PTC is going partner-first from Day One. The company has consulting and systems-integration partners investing in talent and capacity, and training and certification.

Cohen also announced that PTC is bringing its customer success management organization to its channel partners to teach them the best practices to drive the life cycle of success. This move also includes a dedicated partner success management function for OEM and solution builders.

“They will focus on making sure that you all get onboarded correctly, that you get access to the right educational assets, support assets and all the other things that are going to make your journey with PTC successful,” Cohen said.