How Genesys fuels partnership growth at scale with operating efficiencies supported by PartnerStack

Genesys empowers more than 8,000 organizations in over 100 countries to improve loyalty and business outcomes by creating the best experiences for customers and employees. Through Genesys Cloud™, the number one AI-powered experience orchestration platform, Genesys delivers the future of CX to organizations of all sizes so they can provide empathetic, personalized experience at scale.

Genesys works with an extensive ecosystem of channel partners and alliances that enable businesses to achieve their unique goals. Channel partners can either resell or refer opportunities to Genesys in a co-branded relationship. The referral motion is supported by a program managed by Stephen Procopi, Director of Global Partner Strategy and Development at Genesys. 

Historically underutilized, Genesys saw an opportunity to relaunch the Gensys Referral Program using PartnerStack to extend its partner ecosystem, delivering enhanced partner benefits with improved performance, predictability and operating efficiency.

Genesys’ referral program renaissance 

Genesys isn’t new to the power of partnerships, offering a variety of partner programs for resellers, ISVs and global system integrators. Among them, its referral program was a dormant outlier. 

As they dug into the program, Genesys uncovered opportunities for revitalizing its operations.  “Program participation was negatively impacted by the predictability of our program rewards,” Procopi learned, adding, “The timing of payments and the impact of FX fluctuations on payment amount were neither consistent nor predictable. As a result, program participation was low, and new opportunity referrals were not reaching their full potential.” 

Extending customer reach through ecosystem-led sales motions

While Genesys co-sells with hundreds of partners that resell its leading AI-powered experience orchestration platform, Genesys Cloud, Genesys saw an opportunity to extend its customer reach, co-selling with ecosystem partners that provide complementary CX solutions. 

Procopi explains, “Since these partners serve the same customers we do, what if we could enable them to recognize the value a joint solution with Genesys could provide their customers, and incentivize them to refer that opportunity to us,” Procopi adds, considering the possibilities, “Would enhanced benefits and improved predictability incentivize partners to build industry focused offerings around Genesys Cloud and extend the integrated offerings to their customers?”  ​

“Strategically, we saw the referral program as an opportunity to reach new customers with partners preferring to conduct business via this sales motion. In relaunching the program, we looked to address operational challenges that had hampered past performance. And that's where we were introduced to PartnerStack,” Procopi says. 

Enterprise business partners demand predictable rewards

The first challenge Genesys needed to solve was the need for operationally efficient payment processing workflows, with the ability to provide partners predictable program rewards at scale. For a scaling B2B startup, this might involve hiring a freelance accountant. For a global, enterprise business like Genesys with thousands of partners, it was a massive operational lift.

Enter PartnerStack and its automated partner rewards. Procopi explains that at the beginning of each month, Genesys aggregates all referral commission fees due for the prior month’s qualifying transactions and remits payment to PartnerStack. The PartnerStack platform facilitates distribution of referral commission fees to all individual partners globally, enabling each partner to withdraw the reward in their local currency.

“Without PartnerStack, we would be faced with manually onboarding hundreds, if not thousands of different partners with our vendor management and accounts payable teams, and required to convert each payment to local currency. It would be a huge operational overhead that would be cost prohibitive to support,” Procopi says.

The operating efficiency with PartnerStack not only saves time, it generates increased trust, delivering the accuracy and predictability with rewards that partners expect. Procopi notes, “For processing of referral commission payments, the estimated time saved is approximately 20 hours per month.”

How Genesys uses PartnerStack to onboard partners at scale

When working with global partners on a large scale, another challenge is maintaining a personalized onboarding experience for every individual partner. For Genesys, executing a single partner agreement typically requires multiple steps with the partner and the respective legal teams. Multiplied at scale, this process could quickly become time consuming and costly for everyone involved.

A PRM (partner relationship management) tool like PartnerStack is built to provide economy of scale. With built-in workflows and triggers specific to partnerships, PRMs manage the exhaustive administrative legwork required for large partner programs. “PartnerStack facilitates an efficient, frictionless partner onboarding experience,” Procopi says.

He goes on to explain, “Partners enrolling in the Genesys Referral Program are asked to complete a simple application form. Once the application has been approved by Genesys, the partner is invited to review and accept the program terms on PartnerStack. The ‘clicking to accept’ of a standard set of terms eliminates red lines and consumption of valuable legal resources.”

Thanks to PartnerStack’s ability to streamline partner onboarding, Procopi estimates Genesys saves approximately 100 hours per month across multiple teams in the organization.

Tech stack tango: PartnerStack meet Salesforce

For Genesys, a rapid, streamlined experience onboarding to PartnerStack was also a significant consideration in choosing a PRM. Genesys needed to consider solutions that would integrate smoothly with their IT stack, specifically, Salesforce which they use as their CRM. 

Procopi shares, “There was an integration challenge ahead of us. We needed to make sure that anything we did in PartnerStack was integrated with Salesforce. Thanks to the incredible teams at PartnerStack, the integration with Salesforce went very smoothly.”

PartnerStack’s ecosystem is powered by experienced and passionate teams that work behind the scenes to get vendors up and running quickly — and keep things running smoothly.

“The entire experience with PartnerStack from onboarding as a new partner, to the day-to-day program operations, has been a really a smooth journey,” Procopi reflects. Genesys, a leader in experience orchestration, knows firsthand the transformative power of a well-supported partnership.

PartnerStack: Fueling growth at scale

“The reason we partnered with PartnerStack for our referral program is to provide economy of scale in two areas,” shares Procopi. “First of all, the recruiting and onboarding of new referral partners. And secondly, and most importantly, in the processing and disbursement of referral commission fees.”

By offloading crucial administrative tasks and payment processing to PartnerStack, Genesys has been able to focus on what it does best: deliver the future of CX to organizations of all sizes so they can provide empathetic, personalized experience at scale

“The most important business outcome was bringing to market a program that delivers value to Genesys and our partners. PartnerStack was an invaluable partner to achieving this outcome,” concludes Procopi.

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