Triad

Glossary

Terms and concepts in strategic alliance management.

Strategic alliance work has its own vocabulary, much of it overloaded with adjacent meanings from channel programs, sales operations, and customer success. This glossary defines the terms as they're used in modern alliance management: partner ecosystem framing, the motion types (GSI, hyperscaler, ISV, OEM, tech alliance), the measurement vocabulary (attribution, influence revenue, partner health), and the operating practices (QBR, joint account planning, partner scorecards).

Partner types

  • GSI (Global System Integrator) — A large services firm that implements enterprise software at customer accounts. Examples include Accenture, Deloitte, IBM Consulting, Capgemini, and TCS.
  • Tech alliance — A partnership focused on joint engineering, product integration, certification, and co-marketing.
  • ISV partner — An Independent Software Vendor that integrates with your product, embeds it, or vice versa.
  • OEM partnership — A partnership where one company resells another's product under their own branding, often with revenue sharing.
  • Hyperscaler partnership — A partnership with AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud involving co-sell motions, marketplace listings, and program-level engagement.

Motions

  • Co-sell — A motion where two organizations sell together on a customer deal, sharing opportunity data and coordinating execution.
  • Joint account planning — The practice of building a coordinated strategy for a customer account in partnership with a strategic partner.
  • QBR (Quarterly Business Review) in partner context — A recurring formal review between a company and its partner, typically quarterly, covering revenue, pipeline, joint motions, and forward planning.

Metrics and measurement

  • Partner-influenced revenue — Revenue from customer deals where a partner contributed to the deal's progress, even if the partner didn't originate the deal.
  • Partner attribution — The math and policy of assigning credit for revenue contributions across partners on a deal.
  • Partner scorecard — A standardized rubric for evaluating a partnership across multiple dimensions.
  • Partner health score — A multi-dimensional, evidence-backed score that summarizes the state of a strategic partnership.

Concepts

  • Partner ecosystem — The set of partner relationships a company maintains across motion types, considered as an interconnected system.
  • Alliance management — The discipline of building and operating strategic partnerships at depth, distinct from channel management.
  • Channel vs alliance — Two adjacent but distinct partner motions. Channel is high-volume reseller programs; alliance is low-volume strategic partnerships.