Across Middle East, Salesforce has 250 + partners who are an essential part of the company’ s go-tomarket strategy.
Salesforce and the partner must come together to find a resolution that ensures success and strong governance.
Which technologies and innovations can make a difference to the channel market dynamics in the near future?
Kumar has seen first-hand that AI and cloud are top of the agenda for many organisations, and this is no different for Salesforce’ s customers in the Middle East. Salesforce is the platform of choice for AI because of the company’ s world class solutions across sales and marketing, all running on one unified platform.
Salesforce is also driving cloud deployments in the Middle East, with Hyperforce launching in the UAE last year and also set to come to Saudi Arabia soon through a strategic partnership with AWS.
Salesforce is also internalising the use of AI to enhance its channel management, including the process by which it selects partners for certain jobs to ensure that they have the necessary skills. This is done using an internal application called the Partner Connect, a new feature for its Partner Relationship Management solution that will allow businesses to share real-time visibility into partner channel sales and make it easy for teams working across CRM platforms to streamline deals shared across businesses.
Which aspects of your job role do you find most rewarding and which do you find the most challenging?
Kumar finds it very rewarding to help steer partners towards success on their Salesforce journey and to give them the knowledge and tools they need to help customers digitally transform. He enjoys the all-important networking aspect of the role, for which socialising and building relationships is key.
One of the key challenges of the role is the size and scale of the channel ecosystem. Kumar and his team want all Salesforce partners to succeed, and he is optimistic about achieving this owing
Kumar insists that a channel manager must be able to jump in at challenging moments.
to the large, diverse geographic area, the ambitious growth and diversification agendas of governments in the region,
and the level of investment, growth and innovation from Salesforce.
How do you best like to de-stress and recharge when you are off work?
Regular workouts and sports provide an antidote for the inevitable stresses of work for Kumar. He enjoys listening to informative podcasts, embracing the Dubai sun in social settings, and meeting with people from different cultures and backgrounds.
Not only does this allow him to learn and become more informed about the rich culture of the Middle East, but it also motivates him to think outside the box about how to continue growing and developing the channel to support Salesforce’ s regional growth. •
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