Recently, along with Ralph Ceccarelli, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Southeast Computer Solutions, I was able to attend the Website Pipeline Partner Huddle in Greenville, SC that was well-conceived AND perfectly executed!

Our e-commerce partner, Website Pipeline, Inc., designs, builds, hosts, and supports cloud-based front office software solutions that integrate with our clients’ existing ERP software. They’ve had several of their “Partner Huddles” in the past, but by all accounts this one was their best.

As usual, Website Pipeline hosted two social events, with the all-day business session sandwiched in between. Upon arrival, the group of Sage executives, business partners, ISVs, and WP staff gathered at a local restaurant, where the attendees had the opportunity to network, socialize, and exchange ideas. Honestly – in addition to the excellent content provided the next day – interacting with everyone provided an incredible value for all involved.

The next day kicked off with an excellent keynote by Pat Falle, Global Chief Evangelist and Senior VP of Strategic Alliances at Avalara. Pat discussed how you “can’t build a world-class company without a world-class culture.” He focused on the four key drivers of successful partnerships, with customer success being the critical component in these relationships.

As an example, Pat shared how Avalara measures customer service and satisfaction and was quick to point out the differences between customer service (reacting to customers’ problems) and customer success (solving issues proactively). Avalara uses a score tied to customer unhappiness (Avalara calculates the score, and lower scores are better), rather than the more traditional Net Promoter Score, which requires customers to answer questions. Finally, Pat reiterated that culture is critical to the success of any business.

Pat’s keynote was followed by presentations by Website Pipeline executives and many of the ISVs in attendance, including Scanco (barcode scanning solutions), Altec (document management and workflow), American Payment Solutions (integrated credit card processing), MAPADOC (integrated EDI), DSD (Sage 100 customizations), StarShip (integrated shipping solutions), and ScanForce (warehouse automation), among others. All were informative and showed the partners in attendance how their solutions enhance the Sage 100 application for customers. The nicest thing was that each presentation was long enough to be informative and short enough to keep everyone focused and interested!

The event concluded with some fun at Jack & Diane’s, a local dueling piano bar. It was a great venue for more networking and socializing and solidified partner relationships.

Events like these have long-lasting, positive personal and business results. If you’re interested in putting something like this together, I suggest contacting Darcy Boerio, Channel Development Manager at Website Pipeline, who can offer great tips for putting a successful event together for your team!

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