TeamViewer partner program update reveals shift in strategy

TeamViewer, a newcomer to the channel, is on a mission to grow its presence among partners.

The software provider only began its push into the channel about a year-and-a-half ago when it launched its inaugural TeamViewer partner program, featuring four tiers — Registered, Silver, Gold and Platinum — as well as deal registration, training and marketing support. Last week, TeamViewer updated the program with added deal registration benefits, a revised partner portal and an expanded channel team to assist partners. TeamViewer has also opened partner access to its ITbrain portfolio of IT management performance products.

“TeamViewer only started engaging with the channel about 18 months ago. … Before that, we pretty much ignored the channel. There was no program. There was no activity whatsoever,” said Konstantin Ebert, vice president of sales, EMEA, APAC and global channels at TeamViewer. Since launching the program, however, partners have contributed “a nice percentage number to our overall revenues,” he said.

Of the TeamViewer partner program enhancements, Ebert said they are nothing that hasn’t been done before, but “it’s a good solid step forward and it follows the growth that we have with the channel.”

While TeamViewer has a global presence, the company is looking to widen channel coverage. “Today we are doing business in more than 200 countries, and we do not have a full-blown channel set up in each of those countries,” he said.

North and Latin American markets are geographies in which the company is looking for growth, said Finn Faldi, president, Americas, at TeamViewer. He noted that as TeamViewer invests its Americas channel expansion, the vendor recognizes the sensitivities of each specific market. “We have to break [the Americas] into every market. The Canadian market works differently than the Colombian market, [which] works differently than the Argentinian market, [which] works differently than the Mexican market,” Faldi said.

Many customers haven’t recognized the benefits of a full-fledged remote support product, Ebert said. “If you look at the remote-support space, there is a huge amount of customers out there that do remote support somehow.” He pointed to some software companies’ built-in technologies and to “mediocre products” that a customer can obtain for free as examples. One of the biggest partner opportunities, he said, is to target customers that don’t understand what they would gain by having remote support technology like TeamViewer’s.

Ebert noted that one of the appeals of TeamViewer for partners is that its technology is easy to add to their selling motions. Additionally, Ebert sees a partner opportunity around TeamViewer’s IoT portfolio, which is “giving a lot of value for partners to use TeamViewer in solutions-building and adding a lot of services around that.”