No vendor has disrupted the CCaaS space quite like Five9 in recent years.
From an emerging provider pegged to North America to a global player winning some of the largest deals in the CCaaS industry, its story is a remarkable one.
Yet, it is far from over. Indeed, Five9 is securing more business, despite economic uncertainty. In Q4 2022its revenues rose 20 percent (YoY), with numerous enterprise wins.
Such success is even more impressive, considering it doesn’t have an on-premise base to leverage.
Instead, Five9 attracts customers with its rearchitected platform that supports increased resiliency, global scalability, and faster innovation.
Moreover, the vendor has fleshed out its CCaaS solution to become a complete CX Platform, featuring over 500 industry-specific and adjacent pre-built integrations.
There are also 300 APIs and SDKs available, enabling customers and partners alike to extend and enhance the Five9 platform.
With this foundation, Five9 has developed a deep international partner base. These partners are fuelling its sales growth, enabling more sophisticated CX workflows for its customers, and allowing Five9 to flex across numerous industries, such as healthcare, retail, and financial services.
Partnering to Deliver Vertical-Specific CCaaS Solutions
Leveraging its partners, Five9 primes its solution to fit the specific needs of industries.
For instance, within the healthcare vertical, Five9 has formed partnerships with companies such as Acqueon and SpinSci that can provide direct integrations between Five9 and the healthcare system’s EHR.
Another excellent example is in finance. Here, Five9 has teamed up with Computacenter and New Era to connect Five9 with Jack Henry, the CRM system of choice for many credit unions.
The list of partners stretches across many more verticals, with integrations that touch numerous applications often used within each space.
In establishing these partnerships, Five9 ensures that almost every sector-specific tool and CX platform – be it CRM, ERP, ITSM, or other – works with its CCaaS solution. This paves the way for Five9 to give its customers precisely what they want.
“At Five9, we firmly believe that partners make us bigger, better, and stronger,” adds Jake Butterbaugh, SVP of Five9 Global Partner Sales.
“We engage with partners on a very strategic level, discussing the potential of building successful partner practices based on rapid customer implementation, long term customer retention, value, and growth. This allows us to keep pace with an evolving market that is becoming much more intelligent.”
Showcasing the breadth-and-depth of this partner base, Five9 announced its 2022 Partner Awards in January 2023. With 22 partners honored, these awards illustrate the depth of the Five9 ecosystem, the many sectors it touches, and the numerous regions the vendor now supports.
Building Out Its Partner Strategy
The cloud disrupted the contact center market, with Five9 as a pioneer.
The company recognized the significant opportunities SaaS models provided in enabling increased interoperability between enterprise systems – no matter the vendor.
In making this observation, Five9 set to work building a next-generation channel partner program.
Mapping this out early, Five9 reached customers stalwart legacy vendors could not, with a much more flexible proposition.
Building on this success, Five9 soon developed new routes to market, including strategic consultants, systems integrators, strategic resellers, and value-added resellers.
One of these value-added resellers is Connect. This UK-based partner has enjoyed global results, selling and delivering a comprehensive Five9 solution to multiple customers.
Yet, this is only one example of the breadth and depth of the Five9 partner ecosystem. The sophistication of the Five9 channel partner strategy soon pushed past many of its more recognizable rivals, taking the industry by storm.
Now, Five9 aims to consolidate, developing formal certification programs to further fortify these relationships. As Butterbaugh states:
“Our partners are embracing these certification programs, as we ensure partnerships deliver more than just words and good discussions but results, growth, and the right end-user outcomes.”
Deepening these partnerships will also allow Five9 to increase its focus on meeting customers where and how they want to buy.
As a result, Five9 is poised for strong growth the industry as CCaaS implementations ramp up. Indeed, analysts expect the market to double in size by 2027.
Tech Partnerships That Catch the Eye
Beyond the various routes to market and systems integrators, Five9 has established partnerships with the most prominent vendors across the CX stack.
Working with the leading vendors across UCaaS, WFO and CRM we believe we are helping to solve business challenges with holistic solutions. With examples including Microsoft Teams and other leading vendors on UCaaS, Verint for WFO, and Salesforce for CRM, Five9 initiates close relationships with these vendors to keep pace with their innovation. As Butterbaugh says:
“When partners release a new capability, we work very hard to make sure that our connected customers can quickly leverage that within their operations.”
Consider Salesforce who was recently named a Five9 Transformational Partner. Together, they have made well over a thousand integrated deployments. “It’s a strategic partnership that works well and customers simply expect our interlock,” adds Butterbaugh.
Five9 teams up with Oracle on CRM alongside ERP. “Oracle and Five9 share the same passion for transforming the agent and customer experience,” says Jeffrey Wartgow, Vice President Product Management CX Service at Oracle.
Lots of those modern enterprises also harness ServiceNow for ITSM, Poly for hardware, and Zendesk for routing software.
Recognizing this, Five9 created close ties with each, alongside hundreds of other valued partners – with numerous featured in its recent Global Partner Summit.
Many have also developed strong bonds with Five9 by participating in the Five9 University for Partners, which offers training content to bolster sales via solutions engineering and implementation skills.
Moreover, Five9 boasts a Marketing Incentive Program that rewards certain partners for achieving milestones to fund demand generation marketing activities.
Each example exemplifies how the CCaaS leader supports its partners and invests in mutual growth.
Is your tech business ready to team up with Five9 too? Software providers can kickstart their partner journey with Five9 here: www.five9.com/partners/blended-partner-offer
Interested in learning more about Five9? Visit: www.five9.com
