From Vendors to Partners: How to Collaborate Better with Solution Providers?

Introduction

Nolan: Welcome to the Learning and Development podcast sponsored by Infopro Learning. As always, I’m your host, Nolan. Joining me today is Ward Christman, founder and Chief Advisor of HR Tech Advisor. For over a decade, Ward has been collaborating with solution providers to maximize the value of their partnerships and advising them on potential connections, revenue streams, and new partnerships.

With all this expertise and working with the solution providers, there’s nobody better to talk to about how to maximize relationships with these organizations. This is a very apt topic right now. Organizations are looking to scale quickly. They’re looking to be more flexible. A great way to do that is through partnerships with vendors of all types. That’s what we’re going to talk about today: how to collaborate better with our solution providers. With that, I’d like to welcome our special guest, Ward.

Ward, welcome to the podcast.

Ward: Thank you, Nolan. Looking forward to the conversation today.

Ward’s Origin Story: From Nuclear Power Plants to HR Tech

Nolan: As we start with everyone, we’d like to understand better how you got into this space in the first place. What is your origin story of how you landed as the founder of HR Tech Alliances? I know I’ve looked at your LinkedIn, and those who follow Ward know he is a serial entrepreneur, has been a founder, and has had many leadership positions. I’d love to learn where you started and then how you got here.

Ward: I’ll try to be concise. It’s been a long career, and I can keep going. It’s fun. Coming out of college, I was lucky to secure a job as an engineer. After five years, I continued to look at HR and realized that technology can do so much to help. I’m still a tech geek all my life, but there are these things called resume scanners and similar tools. I got interested in that. My wife was running a temp agency at the time.

All of a sudden, somebody showed me the internet. I thought, this is so much more fun than building nuclear power plants. I launched one of the first online job boards before the internet was even commercialized in the early nineties. I never left it and ran a job board for eight years. This is my fourth time in a founder role.

Nolan: Really? Wow.

Ward: I’ve founded a couple of other companies, and now my focus is on advisory and ecosystem-level work for HR, helping vendors collaborate to deliver good service to common customers.

Nolan: When you start with engineering, I would say categorically, people would say that role might be the yin to the yang of HR, learning and development, people development. Was the origin that you just happened to start with the job board, or did you find yourself more attracted to that more personal side of the business?

Ward: I was a junior engineer at a consulting company. We were always seeking our next projects and bidding on them. They would send me down to HR to get the resumes of people they think might be in that bid package and say, “Here’s our people, here’s our team.” And it was a disaster. The files were a mess. I couldn’t find half of the resumes. The ones I did find are a mess.

Photocopying is not going to help. It’s going to look awful. What do we do? I didn’t know. I thought, “There are things called computers now. You can turn a handle, and it pops out a fresh resume. We could even connect them and have a talent network.” So, I sent this suggestion up to the CEO of what became Raytheon engineers. He calls me in the office and asks, “What are you thinking about here with this talent network?” I thought, Why not? Right now, it’s a good old boy network.

That’s how the package went out. It’s, “Who do you know that knows this about that?” I thought, “We have computers so that we can put that in there.” So, ever since then, there have been many possibilities, and it’s still largely untapped, which surprises me, given that I keep hearing people reinventing it, saying, “Oh, we’re going to inventory the skills and make them available online.” I thought, Cool.

Nolan: Workday just bought a company that does that. It was either Workday or another company that had recently acquired a company in that field, which operates the business as it has been run for some time. Is it Raytheon, the defense contractor Raytheon?

Ward: Yes, they bought United Engineers.

Nolan: Interesting. They went on to create Vertex Learning Solutions, and they spun off a learning division. So, it’s coming full circle back to the solution providers. That’s an interesting path. Thanks for sharing that.

The Foundation of Partnership: Open Communication & Shared Goals

Nolan: One of the first things we wanted to discuss, and again, with this subject. You’re very apt. We have solution providers in learning and development, as well as some in HR. You’ve worked with so many of them. We recognize the need to work more effectively with them to achieve growth and scale. So, we want to talk a little bit about how we can collaborate better to create that partnership.

Nobody wants an order-taking type of thing, but sometimes it ends up becoming that. The first thing I want to touch on is communication, open communication, and shared goals. Can you talk a little bit about how those two things can start that partnership on the right foot?

Ward: Yes, those are great points because it’s pretty much anything in life. Communication, if it’s flawed or people are misunderstood, it usually doesn’t go well. Despite best intentions. So, how do you clearly articulate that to a partner who may not know your business or your customers? They know they want to talk to your customers because if you can refer them in, they’ll have a better chance of at least getting heard and maybe winning the deal.

Nolan: Yes.

Ward: That is true, but how do you get to that level of trust? Communication is a big part of it, and reminding them that you’re there is key. Some of these solutions continue to grow, either through acquisition or building, and now AI can build things at an incredible rate. The customers are like, “What do we do?” They need somebody like Infopro to come in and say, “We’ll figure it out for you.” That’s fine. But it’s still.

What are you going to go with? The people in the vendors who work there are trying to talk to the practitioners, saying, “Here’s why you need what we’re doing,” or “Here’s why you need to switch to the way we do it.” Suppose they work for a company with multiple solutions, such as Oracle and SAP, which have hundreds of solutions. They don’t even know what they have, let alone what partners have.

Who’s going to discover the customer’s problem and help them solve it? In my opinion, it takes a village. If vendors are talking to each other and saying, “Hey, we share these common ten customers, we should probably talk regularly. If nothing else, let’s talk about our common customer and how we can better serve them?” Because if we wait for them to figure it out, we’ll be left behind. It’s not going to end well.

The “1+1=3” Effect: A Partnership Success Story

Nolan: One of our good partners is also OpenSesame. It’s interesting because when we started the partnership with them, it was just a random idea. We didn’t know where the value would come from, which left us unsure. We viewed them as simply, “They’ll do what they’re going to do, we’re going to do what we’re going to do.”

But then we had this opportunity with an organization that was looking to transform its financial institution. They were offering payday loans and wanted to become a full financial institution. So, we realized, we thought, “They need a bunch of content that we don’t have that our partner does have.” When we talked with it, we won the bid.

When we talked to the company, we asked them, “What was it that set us apart?” They said, “You were the only company that seemed to be able to have off-the-shelf with custom learning, with custom leadership, and it seemed like we were just working with one company instead of two.” So, it was really interesting. I’m glad we had that win early in our relationship, as it helped us realize that if you don’t look at everything as a one plus one equals two, it can actually lead to one plus one equals three.

I think the key, what I found through all of this, is aligning on those shared goals. In this case, the large finance company we were working with was well aware of its goals. They just said, “Listen, can an organization help me do this?” I think when we partnered with OpenSesame. We just said, “Let’s not focus on who’s doing what, let’s just focus on can we meet these goals and what do we put in front of a client that is a compelling offer,” that really did make it a much different experience than just, “We’re going to do what we do, you’re going to do what you’re going to do”.

Why So Many Partnerships Fail After the Press Release

Ward: You have to start somewhere. But sadly, from my experience in the HR industry, which is really the only industry I’m familiar with, I’ve noticed that many press releases announcing partnerships often stem from a chance meeting at a conference. They talked about it. They realized there were some synergies or common clients, among other things. “We should partner. Let’s do more of that. Let’s get more common clients. Let’s win business together”. A press release is issued, but it lacks a plan.

Nolan: Yes. Yes. The nature of that is the extent of the partnership, as stated in the press release. And then you kind of move on with your day.

Ward: And then they do it again next year.

The Modern Challenge: Managing an Ecosystem of 53+ HR Systems

Nolan: How do you break out of that? What have you seen work the best? We’re talking about both because the same thing happens when a client partners with an organization. We see it all the time. A client will say, “We’re looking to streamline our content development partners.” We want to consolidate our 15 boutique agencies, each specializing in different areas, into a single, unified entity.

An RFP goes out, they select a company, but then everybody still kind of works with these other 15 companies. And so, it’s the equivalent of the press release, and then you move on. How do you get away from that? What have you seen work as a good blueprint for success?

Ward: It’s an interesting struggle because I remember ten years ago, I was on the media team or blog squad. Back then, they called it that. What became Unleashed used to be HR Tech World in Amsterdam. They said, “Hey, we want your help interviewing some of the speakers from the conference.” I thought, “Sure. Who would that be?” “Just this guy named Josh Bersin and Jason Averbrook.” I thought.

Seriously, my first time working with your event, that’s who you put me on camera with. He just sold his first business to Deloitte. Brilliant, but I asked him about that kind of thing. I thought, “It seems employers want one throat to choke.” But the reality is, they have all these systems, and it keeps growing. And then it overlaps.

It just becomes a mess to manage. Some of the people from the bigger organizations, Oracle, would say, “We have everything that our customers need. Why would they buy from anyone else?” I ask, “I don’t know. You tell me. Why does your average customer have 53 HR systems?” “Good point.” It’s a good point. Who’s going to help them?

The vendors need to collaborate to support their common customers and prospects, as looking at demos can be particularly challenging for those who don’t do it regularly. They need to hire somebody who knows the space well enough to help them distill it down to the core elements. What’s important for them from a solution standpoint?

Technology, integration capabilities, and data flow security. There are checklists after checklists, I’m sure you know. It’s a lot. If you don’t do it all the time, it’s still a lot to keep up with. Then you add on top of that, “Do they play nice with each other in the sandbox?” Since we’re introducing this new learning tool, it will integrate with our other solutions. Will the company’s team be adversarial, or will they assist us in interfacing with the rest of our players, considering we lack the staff to manage these behind-the-scenes tasks? It’s quite something.

Aligning on the North Star: Business Performance Goals

Nolan: Yes. That’s always a critical challenge when you’re working and bringing on a new vendor. Again, whether you’re an organization looking to bring on a new vendor or a vendor seeking a partner, I believe those early days are crucial. “We need to create this kind of operating rhythm so that we’re all working in the same shared capacity.” One of the things we talked about was not just communication, but a shared goal.

People who have listened to this podcast know that I often focus on business performance with my clients. If you focus on that, if that’s your North star, business performance, that really helps everybody understand, “Why am I here?” Knowing what that performance is, what is the needle that we’re trying to move? Because then we all understand how we are, as you mentioned, “What are we playing for in this sandbox? What is the goal of this game?” How do organizations help establish those business goals upfront?

Ward: Find some good advisors who have been there, done that many times internally. I recommend external opportunities because, once you leave internal, you can gain a broader perspective or visibility into what’s happening beyond your own little fiefdom or community.

At least in our sphere, we’re tracking 60,000 companies that are largely in the HR Tech and learning tech type ecosystems. We count payroll and similar expenses. As people start to call it work tech and similar terms, it begins to expand. Then you look at players’ Zoom meetings, building work, and technology. They’re in the space now, too. It’s wild. But in terms of your question.

We call it FinTech or financial tech. That’s a whole world, in some respects, where people often get paid for things like that, which tends to be a key metric for goals. What are you going to aspire to? HR and learning, and anybody responsible for their own goals, need to be aware of what the business goals are and hopefully align with them and have those discussions with the other team members, the heads of these silos, if you will, or hopefully they’re not silos because it can all affect each other.

If you’re not aware of what the business goals are, or even financial goals, or new product launches, “Do we have the staff? Can we train the staff that we have? Can we reallocate our staff to learn this for this new product launch or this new market we’re going into?” All these questions.

Do you have the tech to help pivot? Is it in multiple languages? If you’re hiring locally, do we need to partner with an EOR? It’s a lot. So, we don’t go there as much because we are focused on our bubble of 60,000 vendors.

Nolan: Yes. The 60,000-vendor list. One thing I’ve always found effective in creating the kind of thing you mentioned is understanding how money and compensation affect people. I always say that if there’s an incentive for everyone to play together in the way they want, it works wonders for clients.

Vendors, everybody. If they’re all incentivized the same way, I always say it’s important to understand what that incentive is. I talk about this a lot in the component of AI, actually. We recently announced a guarantee: if an organization partners with us to transform their L&D organization, we will save them 30% on their business costs.

But what we really are talking about is not, “Your business used to run a million bucks, now it’s going to cost 700.” We’re saying, “No, keep your budget a million, but do $300,000 more. You’ll be able to do 1.3 million units of work for 1 million. Isn’t that what you want?” We aim to achieve more with less, and we’re aligned on the business impact.

We have said upfront, “We will do it 30% less.” That’s what their motivation is. “Am I just wanting to spend 700,000, or am I wanting to reach a larger audience?” Whichever it is, hold us to it. We’ll put it in the contract. We’ll sign it. It’s what you want. It’s what I want. I’ve also seen when I recently worked with a partner of ours, Colossyan.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with them. They do a lot of AI, avatar videos, and other similar projects, as well as training. I was talking with their CEO and head of partnerships. They were saying, “What really motivates your team?” I said, “Listen, you can do whatever you want to Infopro as a company to reward me, to reward whoever, but you need to focus on the tip of the spear”.

Ward: Absolutely.

Nolan: If you don’t wildly incentivize our salespeople to send work your way, they’re not going to give you the time of day because they’re the ones talking to the customer. They’re the ones listening. So, would you rather spend a hundred dollars on me for marketing or on the person who’s talking to as many clients? I believe that understanding not just the goal itself, but also the drivers behind it and the motivation for achieving or not achieving that target, can be a powerful tool for aligning both parties.

Ward: Couldn’t agree more, and certainly the people who are at the street level or field level, who are talking to the companies as they’re evaluating different approaches, systems, or processes, and who they’re going to either partner with or pay to help or rent their software, whatever the relationship is going to be. Those people out in the field having these conversations are the ones who need to be engaged, incentivized.

I recall mentioning in the green room that some larger organizations, which are vendors with extensive suites and all that, sound appealing if you could have one solution. Reality is, it won’t happen that way. It just hasn’t. So, I don’t see it happening. It’s probably going to get worse. Thanks to all the solutions that AI is coming up with these days, even toast can be made in a toaster.

Navigating the Sensitivities of Sharing Clients and Data

Ward: So, how are you going to bring it? You need to bring it back to the business impact and ensure that if you’re going to introduce something new, add to it, or replace an existing solution, you have to be sensitive to the costs involved, beyond the benefits. The investment and time lost mean you’ll have to pull people off other projects.

If you outsource all of it to some level, you can’t just let that happen. Somebody’s got to manage it. It takes some thought, hopefully.

Nolan: You mentioned the sensitivity of it. Ward and his organization specialize in working with organizations like Infopro, primarily focusing on HR and L&D, to find other partners from whom they can get value. That’s his focus. A pain point, as you mentioned at the start of this, is how we share clients. How can we achieve this in a meaningful way, while safeguarding our clients’ rights to privacy, data integrity, and legal compliance, rather than just their personal preferences? And also, I know there’s always this bit of, “If I let them talk to my customer, they’re just going to steal them.

They’re going to take business from me.” So, there’s a lot of sensitivity there. Obviously, at Infopro, we see a lot of sensitivity working with our clients, saying, “If I bring in this company, are they going to represent me in a way that I am comfortable with? Are they sharing the values that I have? And what are they going to do if I unleash them on the greater market?” Whenever you bring someone else into the mix, there’s a lot of sensitivity involved.

Reducing Friction and Building a Truly Collaborative Environment

Nolan: How do you ensure that it is a collaborative environment with minimal friction? There’s always going to be a little bit of friction, but how do you try to minimize it? We’ve already covered probably a couple of them, but what other ones, maybe that we haven’t brought up, help to reduce that friction and ensure? Whether you’re going vendor to vendor or vendor to internal teams, they work more as a partner versus just like one other company that you’re kind of as your second cousin twice removed?

Ward: It certainly circles back to communication with that partner. Sadly, people often fail to take the time to bring them up to speed on what they have to offer, how they do business, and their culture. Some of that you start learning through osmosis if you’re a close partner and you’re spending time with them. Attend their partner summits, go to the QBRs, and engage in similar activities. But for.

What the customer wants and needs can change over time pretty quickly, too. So, it almost has to be on some level in the moment. “Hey, this customer has got this issue, or they want to implement AI, but how’s it going to affect, for doing it in learning and development, how’s it going to affect your performance system or their pay cycles?” All this stuff is intertwined, whether you want it to be or not.

Nolan: Yes.

Ward: Let’s talk about that. What’s your position on it? How can you handle it? Have you seen this before? Have you worked with other partners like us? And do all that behind the scenes before you even meet that common customer. Then, through the evaluation cycle, buying cycle, implementation cycle, and then certainly go live and beyond, you’ve got to keep having those regular contacts. The biggest mistake I’ve seen is that many RFPs or RFIs, whatever you want to call them, are overly broad.

Nolan: Yes.

Ward: They don’t have anything about, “If we’re looking at different vendors, how do they fit in the ecosystem that we have?” Just because they’re a Workday partner and we’re on Workday doesn’t mean it aligns with our values as a customer or our budget. They think, “Oh, they can”.

Nolan: Yes, totally. Or the other 50 HR tech software in our company.

Ward: Yes, exactly. So, it’s complex. But if you come back to the focus on who’s a common customer, what do they care about? If they’re happy, in our world, that’s the ultimate goal: we have happy, common customers who want to go out and help us get more business from other people who want to be like them, happy customers. It sounds.

Silly, but there are very few people out there saying, “Here’s our solution stack and we love them and they work hard. Sometimes things get broken, but they work together. They communicate regularly on our interests, on our behalf, with us.” A couple of years ago, I did a presentation at the Conference Board in New York. It was virtual, held in the middle of the pandemic, but Fortune 50 companies paid a significant amount to participate. Membership includes bringing in guest presenters. I was talking about the HR tech ecosystem. As an HR practitioner, how do you get all these tools to work together?

The Hidden Risk of Not Sharing Your Vendor List in RFPs

Ward: I asked them some. I did a pre-event survey about how many systems they have, and “A, do they keep track of them? Do they have a list that’s updated?” Most of them did.

Is that just in HR, IT, and learning tech, and whatnot? A little bit lower. Do they share it internally outside of that group, beyond the managers, or does it just keep going down and down, with whoever might be using these tools and technology? “Hey, you’ve got 50 providers that are somehow working to keep our company running”.

Nolan: Yes.

Ward: That’s just HR, let alone FinTech and all this other stuff. Do they know who else is in the soup? In very small numbers at that point. It’s like, “If they don’t know who’s in there, how are they going to keep you happy?” I don’t get it. So they started to realize, “Maybe we should publish that list.” Because once they’re contracted, why shouldn’t they know? I don’t know.

Nolan: That is an interesting topic. It does seem very closely tied. As you mentioned, anytime we’re in an RFP, it gives you the example, and it happens quite often to us. A company is looking to streamline something. They either want all their content, or training delivery is a big one now. We don’t want to have a facilitator or work with a single facilitation company in Thailand, Europe, or any other location. We would like to have a single company that provides all our facilitators. So whichever one it is, any consolidation. Our question is always great.

“Who are you working with today so that we have a better understanding?” It’s, “You won’t know that until we’re not publishing that ever.” It never gets published until after we’ve won. Then they say, “Oh,” so you’re right. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen. In that RFP process, a company says, “Here’s who we work with. How have you worked with them in the past? What is your value?” I hadn’t given it much thought, but upon reflection, I realize there are instances where we could have a very compelling bid if we had the necessary information. If we did know that, there are some companies in the learning development space that operate in a vendor management style. They’re not really value-added.

They’re more like, “We’ll kind of bring everything into one house and manage where the chips go,” rather than focusing on developing the stuff. We’ve worked with a couple of them a lot, and we have really good relationships, which is tough because we also compete. So it is important to have a good relationship between the two. You’re right. I never actually thought to challenge that perspective. The more, because at the end of the day, I don’t know the risk associated with not telling them. The risk of saying, “I’m Nike and I work with Infopro.” I’m trying to think why that’s a trade secret. I don’t know.

Ward: Here’s the risk that people could probably align with or have heard the horror stories of: “OK, we’re going to rip and replace this one system. Here’s what you need to know. Please give us a bid. We’ll pick it.” They put it in. They try to do their first test run or whatever they do before going live, but stuff fails. They ask, “Why is that?” “Well, no data is flowing over to our benefit system or to our payroll system.”.

“It wasn’t in the RFP. Who’s your payroll system?” “It’s ADP.” “Well, we have a connector at ADP. If you just told us you’re using ADP.”

“We could have taken care of that before we were at this point. Now the project’s late. It’s costing money. If there are any issues now, it’s going to take longer and cost more money.” That happens all the time, but it shouldn’t have to happen. Once you’re in the family, “Hey, you need to meet the family,” because it’s a family. It’s a village.

Nolan: Yes. As we wrap up, Ward, one thing that comes to mind is that my biggest role is helping vendors work better with each other. That’s a dumbed-down version of saying it, but that’s what it is. I realize the tremendous value of somebody who’s in a neutral position. It’s funny because I’m hearing myself tell my clients this, “Hey, whenever you’re doing a strategy, you need somebody to come in who doesn’t have a big financial motivation to do one way or the other.

They’re just going to help you align on some things.” We know anytime you’re doing change management. There are a lot of things at play. A lot of things are sensitive. They’re replacing things that used to be done in a certain way. You have to manage both perception and reality. I definitely feel that having someone like you, especially if you’re a vendor in the HR or L&D space, is invaluable in giving value to those partnerships, either by making more of a partnership or finding one that works better for you. It’s been great. Learning for me as well. Because we hadn’t talked ahead of time and didn’t really understand your business that well.

How to Connect with Ward and HR Tech Alliances

Ward: Yes, it’s fun, and nobody else is crazy enough to do it, I think. We have a platform that we’ve developed from our advisory side and made available.

A subscription for those who want to do self-service. The vendors who want to sort through this themselves find it’s never easy. At least, you have to empower yourself with information tools and, hopefully, good connections that will always be thinking of your common customers. If you’re considering new customers, why not leverage the success you’ve achieved with your current ones? Keep that in mind. I think everybody will be successful.

Nolan: Lovely, Ward. We’ll put your information in there, but for those who are just listening, what’s the best way to get in touch with you and learn a little bit more about what you do?

Ward: Yes, thanks. I think the best way is probably to go to our community portal, the HR Tech Alliances community platform. That’s HRTechAlliances.com. You can learn more about what we’re doing for the community. There isn’t a lot there for practitioners, but if you have vendors that aren’t playing nice in the sandbox, say, “Hey, you ought to go join HR Tech Alliances and figure out how you can be a better community player here”.

We need you, we want you on the team, but we need you to collaborate a little better. I’m sure you know who I’m thinking of. You’re probably thinking of somebody right now. That’s where we’ll do our best to try to help connect the dots so that everybody wins.

Closing Thoughts

Nolan: Yes, right on. Wonderful. Ward, thank you so much for sharing some time with our listeners. They appreciate it. We’ll talk again shortly. Thanks. Bye.

Ward: Sounds great, thanks for having me.