As I’ve shared this year, IBM is on a journey to double down on our commitment to the IBM Ecosystem. We’ve made significant investments in placing our ecosystem partners at the center of our company’s go-to-market strategy. We continue to work diligently to simplify the experience and be more essential to their businesses with improved and expanded tools and resources.

Today, we are taking the next step in our partner journey by announcing a revamped approach to skilling that, for the first time, gives all registered PartnerWorld members access to the same training and enablement as IBM sellers. Importantly, partners now have access to those resources at the same time as IBM sellers, and at no cost to them. We are also rolling out a one-stop shop for learning and credentialing.

Premium training and enablement to help close deals

Partners have told us that the more expertise they attain in the IBM products they sell, the better equipped they are to win with clients. With this in mind, and with the goal of helping them win more, we have extended access to the same trainings, badges and enablement materials that our own sellers enjoy.

The skilling available to partners closely aligns to product offerings that partners use to deliver hybrid cloud and AI solutions for clients, within data and AI, automation, security, sustainability, infrastructure and more. New sales and technical badges demonstrate a partner’s industry-recognized expertise, including the ability to position and differentiate an IBM solution to clients. The badges are also shareable on professional social platforms such as LinkedIn, and they travel with the learner.

Some of the additional materials we make available include:

• Sales demos: guidance that enables partners to run their own successful demos for clients, including verbatim scripts that highlight benefits of the offerings
• Seller presentations: key templates to help win deals, including how to position the offering and how to share advantages over competitors
• Client presentations: ready-to-go assets for client meetings that highlight key benefits and advantages of IBM’s offerings
• Digital prospecting: additional content that showcases IBM product capabilities that can be shared with clients, such as white papers, analyst reports, decks and solutions briefs

When new content is made available, it can be accessed by IBMers and partners at the same time, to help improve collaboration and make engagement more dynamic.

Improved digital experience

As part of IBM’s undertaking to introduce efficiencies in an agile way, partners can access the skilling and enablement materials through a new learning hub designed to drastically improve the digital experience. It’s now simpler than ever to find the right training at the right time and complete the desired coursework. Users will notice a more modernized and consistent experience on the IBM training site, making it easier to find resources.

I encourage you to explore – start now by visiting the learning hub.

IBM’s commitment to the ecosystem

I want to be clear – partners and IBMers are considered a single team. The investments we continue to make in the partner experience are a part of our ongoing commitment to be more essential to their businesses. In addition to what we introduce today, over the past year, we have doubled brand-specialized partner sellers in the IBM Ecosystem, increased technical partner sellers by more than 35% and built up the digital experience with our Partner Portal. Our work has resulted in improved deal registration and introduced to partners more than 7,000 potential deals valued at over $500 million globally. (Proprietary metrics obtained from IBM sales data, January 2022–August 2022.)

Our work doesn’t stop here. We will continue to make investments in the partner experience so that together, as a single team, we can achieve our goal of doubling revenue through the IBM Ecosystem in the next 3–5 years.¹ You have my commitment.

¹ Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

Explore the new IBM learning hub