Sales Alignment, Ease of Business, & Profitability are Pillars of Partner Growth: Zoom Video

Vishal Amin, Channel Head – India & SAARC, Zoom Video Communications, in a detailed conversation with Amit Singh, highlighted that as modern consumers demand more engaging and superior experiences, revamped and upgraded digital services and business interoperability will be the key. He shared that Zoom will remain focused on three key pillars to build its partner programs: enhancing sales alignment, ease of conducting business, and profitability for partners

As businesses drive their strategies toward hybrid work, what are the unique developments you have observed in video communications, virtual workforce management, and cloud-based collaboration platforms in India?

Leveraging video to bring together dispersed, remote teams or connecting with friends and family is really only the tip of the iceberg. As countries around the world start to reopen, enterprises are turning to collaboration platforms to transform their business in today’s hybrid environment. Be it overhauling their business proposition, enhancing their ability to deliver innovative products and services that meet the needs of the hybrid world, or driving employee engagement for talent attraction and retention, organizations are relying on video communications in a much larger capacity.

As a result of the hyper-competitive landscape, modern consumers have more choices than ever and thus demand for more engaging and superior experiences. They have much higher expectations of proactive services, personalized interactions, and connected experiences across both physical and virtual channels. Business interoperability will be key: applications and software are not competing against each other, but coexist to ensure that all consumer touchpoints across the physical and hybrid are reached. Digital services also need to be revamped and upgraded: we are seeing businesses increasingly leveraging video APIs and SDKs to enhance, empower and tailor-make their digital platforms/ applications to meet the changing needs of their customers and deliver a great customer experience.

How are emerging technologies like AI and IoT impacting the growth of the video communications market in India?

AI and machine learning are enabling greater collaboration and inclusion by powering innovations like live translation and transcription, which break down language barriers making virtual meetings more accessible. Customer Experience teams are transitioning towards an era led by AI-powered experiences, which can provide personalized resolutions for customers and help improve agent productivity.

AI is being leveraged in businesses to make better decisions by capitalizing on datasets. Zoom has introduced features powered by AI to help improve the virtual experience and enhance collaboration. For example, to enable a distraction-free audio experience during meetings, noise suppression – an automatic feature – helps reduce background noise, like a dog barking. Similarly, Zoom’s virtual backgrounds are an AI-powered feature that allows users to blur or replace their backgrounds for increased privacy and meeting focus. In June, we announced the acquisition of Solvvy, a conversational AI technology to enhance the customer experience of Zoom Contact Center.

In this era of hybrid work, businesses are using more apps than ever to collaborate and get work done from anywhere. In this scenario, how is Zoom differentiating itself from the competition?

Zoom is successfully evolving from a video application to an indispensable platform. The Zoom Developer Platform, Zoom Events,Zoom Contact Center and many other innovations were created with the same level of scalability and simplicity that has made Zoom a trusted platform, eliminating boundaries and expanding opportunities for businesses worldwide.

Simplicity is at the core of everything we do: While there is enormous complexity behind Zoom’s ease of use, customers embrace us because we just work. Zoom is different because our platform is uniquely architected to be video-first and compatible with customers’ preferred technology ecosystem.

Please update us on your India and global footprint in terms of business and channel presence.

Zoom’s partners play a key role in contributing to our expansion and growth in the APAC region. Zoom, as an advocate of joint success, is committed to empowering and growing its diverse ecosystem of partners spread across the region. Due to the pandemic in the past year, with the spike in demand for collaboration platforms, our partner program witnessed a significant expansion and increased momentum across the globe. Over 2021, we welcomed more than 3,500 partners to our programs; we have 700+ active partners in APAC. We continue to rapidly expand our partner ecosystem across go-to-market and geographies. Our channel is currently contributing more than 20 percent to our non-online bookings, and nearly 30 percent globally as of September 2021. In India, our partners include Tata Teleservices and Savex Technologies.

What are your channel initiatives over the last 12-18 months? How is Zoom supporting channel partners in offering innovative solutions and acquiring new customers?

Partners are fundamental to Zoom’s growth and success, therefore we are continuously evaluating new ways to elevate our program and offer additional benefits to our entire partner ecosystem. With the launch of the Zoom Apps SDK in July 2022, we opened the program to all developers. You can create new apps and games that transform the meeting experience or extend your existing web app with the Zoom Apps JavaScript SDK. Zoom Apps allow developers to tap Zoom customers, and users can discover and add new apps within the same client they use every day. You can develop experiences for customers both within and outside of Zoom Meetings with the Zoom Apps SDK. Zoom Apps go beyond web apps to provide engaging and productive solutions using client features and APIs from the developer platform.

In March 2022, we launched the Zoom Up Partner Program, a unified, holistic, global partner framework that makes it simple for partners to transact and grow their business with Zoom. The enhanced Zoom Up program offers a simplified architecture, one that today’s resellers, carriers, distributors, ISVs, and referral partners need as they navigate a fast-paced, competitive landscape. It will be available across the entire partner ecosystem later this year.

Further, last year, we announced the launch of our first-ever Zoom Partner Demand Center in December 2021 as we continue to invest in the expansion of Zoom’s diverse partner network. To expand their Zoom marketing practice, the Partner Demand Center offers members of the Zoom partner community a leading marketing automation platform. It offers a wide array of robust functionalities, including email campaigns, web content syndication, social media marketing, events marketing, including webinar syndication, video marketing, digital ads and banners, and co-branding.

Please talk about your channel roadmap and plans for expansion over the next 2-5 years.

We are committed to investing in our partner community by focusing on enhancing our partner programs. Our goal is to support our partners in their journey as they develop new competencies and grow their businesses with Zoom. We will remain focused on three key pillars aswe continue to build our partner programs: enhancing sales alignment, ease of conducting business, and profitability for partners.

First, we will continue to support our partner community across sales, operations, marketing,  programs, and more. The core of Zoom’s values is our investments in our workforce as we remain focused on delivering customer and partner happiness. Next, to transact with Zoom we want to deliver a seamless, simple experience for our partner community. We will deliver improvements across operations as we move towards driving system improvements and automation, enablement as we build additional training and qualification tracks, and programs as we deliver new methodologies for feedback, partner advocacy, and engagement.

Our final goal is to offer a platform that partners can leverage to build a profitable business. We are dedicated to providing innovative programs and you will continue to see our partner offerings grow in the coming year whether that’s through software integration, our opportunities for app development with APIs and SDKs, or sales and delivery services.