As the market becomes increasingly saturated with more and more products becoming available to consumers, it’s vital for ISVs to identify new ways to stand out against the competition. The solution? ISV Partnerships. In part one of our ISV Growth Edition mini-series (which we developed to offer insight into the dynamic ISV market and pertinent tips for growth), we’re tackling the importance of partnerships for ISVs and tips for getting started.
Not sure what an ISV is? Start here.
Let’s start with the basics. ISVs – also known as Independent Software Vendors – are individuals or organizations that develop, market, and sell software solutions in the B2B space, either to a niche or mass market. For example, an ISV like ResortCleaning offers powerful housekeeping software to property management businesses.
Growth Challenges for ISVs:
For ISVs, like most other companies, scaling effectively for growth maximization is pretty much objective number one. However, between growing competition and ever-increasing consumer needs, ISVs shouldn’t expect their journey to be a walk in the park. Many challenges stand in the way of exponential growth, including a lack of market reach, insufficient customer base, and limited integration potential – all of which are non-negotiables to keep up with and flourish in today’s landscape.
This is where ISV partnerships can help.
By partnering with businesses or influencers that serve their industry, ISVs can achieve the non-negotiables mentioned above and better equip themselves to outpace their competitors. That said, who you partner with matters. Each kind of partnership will serve up unique benefits, leaving it up to you (the ISV) to best determine which would be best suited for your specific goals. For an ISV prioritizing growth, the following types of partnerships can work to increase the value of your software, drive merchant stickiness, add new revenue to your business:
1. Payment Partnerships
As an Independent Software Vendor, entering into the right payment partnership can deliver major benefits to your merchants, end-users, and business itself. Partnering with Tilled’s PayFac-as-a-Service, for example, can be an effective way to expand your service offering to include payment processing, while also increasing your total revenue.
With Tilled’s integrated payment solution, it’s easy to seamlessly add payments to your core software and begin monetizing those payments. Tilled’s healthy revenue share empowers ISVs to earn commissions from every transaction (check out our pricing here), and depending on your processing volume, that can amount to a substantial recurring stream of revenue – something to consider when weighing payment partners.
2. Marketing Partnerships:
Marketing partnerships can be wildly effective in helping ISVs overcome growth challenges. For example, if your goal is to reach more of the market and capture new, quality leads, consider creating partnerships with established voices that serve your vertical, such as podcasters, speakers, or influencers.
Take it from us too, as we learned the power of utilizing this type of partnership very quickly here at Tilled. By teaming up with friend and merchant sales superstar, James Shepherd, we’re had the opportunity to partake in joint webinars and access valuable content designed for our shared audiences and subsequently drive more brand awareness and inbound leads to Tilled.
3. Partnerships with Other ISVs
One of the best strategies for growing in a saturated market is to offer more. But it’s not that simple; resource and budgetary constraints often challenge an ISV’s ability to provide more innovative solutions without distracting from their main focuses, making integrations with other ISVs indispensable.
A technical integration can add significant value to your total offering, attracting new customers and improving customer retention as a result. When deciding what partnerships to pursue, consider other ISVs whose offering compliments your own. For example, an ISV that provides a powerful CRM platform to the field services industry might want to consider integrating with a quoting or estimating platform tailored to the same industry.
How Partnerships Directly Affect Growth
For ISVs, increasing partnerships and integrations can bring about countless opportunities for success, especially in the new post-pandemic digital age, where it has become increasingly vital not to rely entirely on one resource and operate through an ecosystem of software.
If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits a partnership with Tilled can offer your business, contact our sales team and let’s start unlocking your growth potential today!
