Originally, a quarterly business review (QBR) was an enterprise tool used by companies to strengthen relationships with their customers. A QBR offered an opportunity to display how enterprises added value to the customer and aligned their products and services to their customer’s business goals.

The “classic” 4 P's of Marketing – Price, Product, Promotion, and Place was introduced in 1960 and had a long virtuous run. However, Sean MacDonald, Chief Digital Officer at McCann Worldwide argues changing consumer behavior of Millennials and Gen Z (colloquially known as zoomers) is making these 4 P's obsolete. He proposes a new set 4 P's of Marketing: Partnerships, Personalized, Positioning, and Purpose.

300,000 Microsoft partners have a hand in 95% of Microsoft’s commercial revenue. Since 2013, when Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft, he led a fundamental transformation in Microsoft business from an on-premises company to a cloud services and subscription platform company.

Successful partner ecosystems can increase the economic value of enterprises, increase competitiveness, and significantly increase sales growth. But, fully achieving its potential isn’t that easy, and research identifies poor execution as a major obstacle.  To help improve execution, software and service companies have introduced new platforms and tools. These platforms and tools solve different problems ranging from sales opportunity management to training to complex partner ecosystem management.

I am Howard Epstein. I recently joined the Pronto marketing team to help partner ecosystem decision makers, buyers, and influencers get to know the company, the leadership, and understand how Pronto can help them achieve the full value of their ecosystem initiatives. When I start a new gig, I try to get an understanding of what makes a company tick. As a starting point I wondered why they started the company?