Kinaxis partners early next year will have access to an enhanced global partner program — PartnerLink. The company expects it will be mutually beneficial to Kinaxis and its partner community.

Partners can augment and extend services, sales, marketing and product capabilities to better support Kinaxis’ customers. Kinaxis is a supply chain management, and sales and operation planning software company based in Canada’s capital of Ottawa.

Kinaxis PartnerLink will establish five partner types: global SI, regional SI, solution extension partner, partner referral and VAR.

Although PartnerLink won’t launch until the first quarter of 2021, Kinaxis already has five solution extension partners in the program. They include 4flow and OCYO Consulting.

Supply Chain Management Market Growing

Conrad Mandala is Kinaxis’ vice president of global alliances.

Kinaxis’ Conrad Mandala

“Kinaxis has experienced exponential growth — new customers, new partners, new salespeople,” he said. “And at the same time, the supply chain management market has also grown quickly. We needed to introduce a partner program that enabled us to scale and better align with the market. We ultimately wanted to create a program that helps us foster new ways to engage with Kinaxis and the partner ecosystem, that offers a broader range of services and helps customers gain more value from their investment in Kinaxis RapidResponse.”

Kinaxis took a “very open and transparent” approach to building PartnerLink, Mandala said.

“We engaged with a broad range of partners and other key Kinaxis stakeholders,” he said. “Through a world-class consulting firm with vast channel experience in the enterprise software space, we interviewed our partners and gathered key information. We listened and we learned a lot about the needs of all parties concerned, and made a concerted effort to incorporate their inputs into the design and content of the program.”

The new program is a “massive advantage” for the company, its partners and customers, Mandala said.

“Not only has Kinaxis made this investment, but our partners have, too,” he said. “Plus, with the addition of solution extension partners, new value-added applications for customers and market segments are being created.”

Simplify, Collaborate and Accelerate

The program’s key concepts are simplify, collaborate and accelerate, Mandala said. First is to enable partners to implement Kinaxis software to bring value to customers.

“Second, we’ll implement a smoother integration into our marketing and business development teams so we can leverage marketing dollars and efforts together with our partners to extend our combined reach,” he said. “Lastly, as we mature, the design intent is to build out real, working plans to interlock our professional services teams with our partners’ teams so that our customers can benefit from a global team of supply chain and RapidResponse experts. This, we truly believe, will make it easier for our partners and customers to realize the value of Kinaxis. At the end of the day, we are here for their success.”

“Businesses need resilience and flexibility in their supply chains to deal with constant market disruption,” said Mike Landry, global service line leader of supply chain at Genpact. “Together with Kinaxis, we help companies gain the agility to adapt, rise and thrive in today’s challenging environment. We are excited to see the evolution of the Kinaxis partner program.”