2019 Partner of the Year Highlights the Value of One Identity Bootcamps

[MUSIC PLAYING] IPG is a vendor-independent consulting company located in the [INAUDIBLE] area, our headquarters in Winterthur near Zurich, and we have offices in Constance, Berlin, Bern, and Vienna. IPG participated in various One Identity Boot Camps for various products or for various presales tracks, for [INAUDIBLE] Manager, for Safeguard, and even for the SAP Presales Boot Camp with up to 8 or 10 employees that we sent out to those boot camps to gain knowledge in different aspects of the boot camp trainings. The experience for the employees was pretty much different because we tried to set up double teams, so two employees that were being sent out to the boot camps. One was new-hired guy that was starting with the material and that was getting introduced into that special topic for the first time. And the other one was one of our experienced guys who was gaining additional knowledge in edge cases, and stuff like that, and even the newer features of newer releases for already-known technology. As an overall recommendation, just attempt those boot camps as they're the easiest and the quickest way to gain hands-on experience on product features, to get an exchange with experts from the vendor that can give you subject-matter expertise on their special features, on their products to gain momentum and to gain traction in the business with new features, with new products that are coming up from the vendor. From a business perspective, we are working in a flexible business area. So that means and in the hiring process, you've come into touch. You can't wait until you have several amount of employees on board it. So you have to onboard them just in time. So for this it's essential. The boot camps are essential for that so that you don't have to wait, so you can send them directly. They get a lot of more information as they can realize in these two up to five days. But they get the time after that. On the other side, the materials used also for interim boot camps where we have this ability if we have more than two employees onboarded at the same time, so we can take this material. We know that it's not wrong, what we are telling. I would explain it how the business is going on. It starts like-- or the boot camp, its originally addressed to presales. But what is presales in reality? It's everyone who talks to the customer is, at the end of the day, a presales guy. It is the business development manager who is thinking about how we as a partner can grow. These are the same service managers, project managers who have the first contact. These are the implementor and, of course, the operators itself. So they a daily, day-to-day business talk to the customers. They get questions. They cannot ever answer these questions, but they can then address it at the boot camps, then can go back with this information. And at the second time if they have question, they can answer. And they feel more [INAUDIBLE]. They can easily give this information to the sales, which are, at the end of the day, responsible for closing deals. But they have much more input from the operating parts than before. And we would like to intend to take more [INAUDIBLE] the discussion with the trainers at the boot camps because this is the essential one. It's not a [INAUDIBLE] class [INAUDIBLE]. It's based on the direct communication. Everyone has attended the [INAUDIBLE]. It's also a little bit kind of experience transfer, how you behave in such situations. It's not the easiest one. But I want to say it can't be learned, but you can train it a little bit. From a business development perspective where, on the partner's side, decisions are made regarding which product of which vendor is the major one, therefore, the boot camp can start a mind-changing process, especially if [? vendors ?] are acquired by others, so they-- for myself, I know it from my past that there is a time frame. You have a lot of opportunities. You have customers. They wanted to have discussions. They wanted to open their mind as well because they don't know if it's the right product or not. In this case, it's for a business developer essential to have the feature set of other products as well. And at the end of the day, the change of the maintained products and the products in the portfolio are based on the-- can be based on a boot camp way and say, hey, the products were different. But not anymore. And it's from an overall perspective from one customer, one vendor, one integrator, one partner. From this single point of view, it could be the best starting point. [MUSIC PLAYING]