The SaaS market nowadays may look like a western movie for the sales representatives. Take the 1966 classic ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ directed by Sergio Leone. In short, in the Southwest during the Civil War, a mysterious stranger, Joe (Clint Eastwood), and a Mexican outlaw, Tuco (Eli Wallach), form an uneasy partnership -- Joe turns in the bandit for the reward money, then rescues him just as he is being hanged. When Joe's shot at the noose goes awry during one escapade, a furious Tuco tries to have him murdered. The men re-team abruptly, however, to beat out a sadistic criminal and the Union army and find $20,000 that a soldier has buried in the desert.

Just like this movie, you are surrounded by all these actors - your sales representative, the customer success manager, the technical account manager if your contract includes so, the partner or the support team. They are or should be creating that type of chemistry alongside with your technical crew to speed things up and push this vehicle called your business on the Service Cloud solution from a simple and easy-to-drive car to a sophisticated multi-optional machinery. So to all gold-diggers out there, where do you go first when things get nasty with the product? For this article, we are going to talk about your partner.

The Good

You made your choice: the partner helps you with the implementation. You might have had various reasons for that – the documentation looks heavy, the overall cost for delivery and avoiding duplication is lower, the project landed on your desk and the product is new, you need it quickly as the organization is depending on it. You may not have an experienced administrator because he/she is supposed to cover other areas in the company, so the partner comes in handy. Furthermore, the partner knows the product, implemented it in the past, you have your referrals as you may have cooperated with them on other implementations, so they come with reputation and credibility. The plan looks smooth.

The Bad

On other hand, the partner is not low-cost or no risk to your organization. Working with the partner may, at times, feel like losing some autonomy, part of the decision-making is shared, meaning also a change of accountability. The resource allocated to the project from your company may significantly increase from the planning time as some of the key staff members could commit to other tasks. Like in any other collaboration, there are times when challenges occur and could trigger other risks associated with the delivery of the project. 

The Ugly

Take the experience of Organization A when their many-faceted series product issues continued with Oracle Support. Long-running service requests and investigations, different product experts and calls carried out. In the end, it took the visit of the Support Senior Director and Support Manager to understand that partner X created this REST API framework on top of the Service Cloud product, which made things work slowly, grow frustration and block the ease of use. From Development side, fixing parts of the product would only break other modules or even the overall implementation. 

At Oracle, we strive for that world-class customer experience. We know that support is your only channel to feedback this carousel and that is our gold mine to improve the performance. It is the reason to our next article, which will be covering the dilemma of selecting your partner to mitigate business risk effectively and run a successful implementation, aiming to switch the unpredictable and unique twisted 1966 storyline to a different plot. No whispers, no trailers, stay curious.