At the most basic level, a partner ecosystem is a network of complementary businesses, where members share customers, leads, prospects, and territories. Partner ecosystems create new opportunities by building new solutions together; grow revenue by co-selling together; reach new audiences through co-marketing; drive partner-sourced and influenced revenue; and share data to drive new marketing strategies. With a continuous push towards efficiency in sales and marketing, unlocking this partner co-sell motion has never been more critical to go-to-market excellence. The wider your network of partners, the more effective it is, but the more difficult it becomes to manage.
Enter WorkSpan, an end-to-end, data-driven platform that enables businesses to manage their entire partner ecosystem with modular flexibility, and enables the partners in those ecosystems to effectively collaborate with the ecosystems they depend on.
WorkSpan has built the ‘System of Execution’ for partner ecosystem management, with rich integrations to popular CRM systems that allow partners to collaborate, share pipeline data, execute on deals, and gather real-time analytics in a data-secure and compliant manner. They have tapped into the largest software ecosystems such as AWS, Microsoft, SAP, and Google, and are continuing to add blue-chip software ecosystems to their ever-growing network. The company powers some of the top technology ecosystems, managing over 2,000 partner companies, $50 Billion of co-sell opportunities and $1 Billion in incentive funds.
WorkSpan takes advantage of a strong network flywheel, where the top software, hardware, and cloud hyperscaler hubs use the WorkSpan network to access the customer base of their spoke partners, spoke partners leverage WorkSpan to connect directly to the hub ecosystems they rely on, and WorkSpan grows its capability set to meet the needs of hubs and spokes alike.
We believe WorkSpan today is at an inflection point. They have proven out their ability to attract top software ecosystems, and have reached a critical mass of spokes to drive long-term stickiness. Mayank, Amit, and the team have created the category for partner ecosystem management, which is a largely greenfield market today where companies currently rely on rudimentary tools that can no longer scale with modern ecosystems. Over time, Insight believes that WorkSpan can scale well past technology ecosystems into other verticals, like FMCG, where the partner distribution channel is even more mission critical. While the business is still in early innings, we’re excited by this potential for massive TAM expansion beyond where the business plays today, and by the clear ability of the team to build toward emerging customer needs in an efficient and innovative way.
We are thrilled and honored to lead WorkSpan’s $30M Series C, with participation from insiders Mayfield and Microsoft Venture Fund, and to partner with Mayank, Amit, and the entire WorkSpan team as they continue to scale up!
