Monday.com looking to grow partner ecosystem in Southeast Asia

“Monday.com is looking for system integrators across Asia that have got a strong track record of quality, project delivery, high customer satisfaction, and can also work across also our portfolio of offerings,” says Dean Swan, Vice President & GM, APJ.

Following the establishment of its new office in Singapore, Monday.com is now focused on growing its partner ecosystem in Southeast Asia. As Singapore is a mature economy for Monday.com (Monday), Dean Swan, Vice President & GM, APJ, at monday.com believes they can translate success there quite easily.

However, in terms of growth and success in other markets in the region, Swan stated there is a strong need to rely on the channel ecosystem given the diversity in terms of cultures, languages as well as maturity between the emerging economies in Southeast Asia.

Swan pointed out that there has been phenomenal growth in the Philippines and that continues to be a market that they invest in. Thailand and Indonesia have also been well performing markets for Monday. He explained that success and growth in these markets will rely heavily on their partner ecosystem.

“That's where partners have always played a very important role in terms of our go-to-market, and in terms of our ability to support our customers, especially when we think about different languages and the dynamics of the region. So, we've got about 80 partners in the region, and that's growing at 44%,” said Swan in an interview with CRN Asia.

“So, if I think about in Singapore, we've got some partners that have been with us for a number of years, like AsiaPac, and then we've got a newer generation of partners, like iZeno, that have come on board over the past couple of years. And I think that trajectory will continue to accelerate, which has meant, obviously, we've also opened up our regional office for Southeast Asia in Singapore,” explained Swan.

Swan also believes that this is the next chapter in their regional growth story as well. The new office will serve as the regional headquarters for Southeast Asia. Teams in the office are made up of channel partner managers, account executives, marketing team, customer success, implementation consultants.

“What will happen over time is we'll have more and more of our regional HQ roles actually established in that office over the next couple of years. But fundamentally, it's about having a presence close to our customers and our partners. If I think about the last two and a half years, we've had a team that has been primarily fly-in, fly-out out of the region. And when you have a look at the customers that we're supporting, we've got large telcos, large government agencies, large education institutions. Of course, they want to also see Monday there in the region. Our large partners want to work closely with us as well,” he added.

Partner recruitment

As Asia is a much more partner-led market from a Monday perspective, Swan explained that part of the strategy is having the partner leadership based in Singapore. At the same time, Monday is also looking for different types of partners.

“We've now had conversations around distributors and looking at distributor type go to market in terms of the breadth and the dynamics of the market around Asia. That will also help us on the partner recruitment because I think one of the opportunities and also the challenges is, as Monday has gone from single-product work management into having CRM and having service management and having dev, there's a different portfolio of partners that we're also bringing in,” he said.

“For example, we want partners that are CRM specialists and that are really going to ride the growth wave with Monday. We want partners that are specialists in enterprise service management and partners that are really strong at agile and development practices and how Monday can support that,” added Swan.

According to Swan, this means that Monday is looking for system integrators across Asia that have got a strong track record of quality, project delivery, high customer satisfaction, and can also work across also Monday’s portfolio of offerings with organizations that adapt at working with CRM and service and project management as well as represent the full proposition of the platform to customers as well.

“We've had a very strong track record of success in this region in industries like retail, manufacturing and professional services. So, working with partners that also have that specialization in those specific industries is key,” explained Swan.

Partner enablement

In terms of ensuring partners are well enabled on Monday, Swan also highlighted that they will focus on creating broad-scale awareness of Monday.

“We have a really good and growing brand at the moment. Accelerating it benefits our existing partners and future partners because we're creating that strong brand awareness and demand for Monday, which then is normally coupled with investments in marketing and go-to-market, that’s number one for us.”

“Number two, If I look at AI, we see enormous opportunities and enormous growth. On the Monday platform at the end of the last year, we had already 10 million AI actions, and that was growing at about 300 percent every single quarter. So, we're seeing enormous demand for Monday's AI offering, and there's an opportunity in the channel to integrate AI into the existing customer workflows. So, what does that mean in terms of investment? It's us investing in rolling out AI enablement and support for our partners.”

“So, we're doing that actively at the moment in terms of producing content that enables our partners from a pre-sales perspective, running workshops and running initiatives that's going to sort of prepare them for what's here, but also what's coming and help them harness that opportunity. We're also making investments in terms of the marketplace for partners. So, if you look at our marketplace strategies, we're actually building an AI marketplace ecosystem, and that becomes a hub for AI-powered solutions,” said Swan.

Swan concluded that Monday will also be investing in their teams on the ground in the region to work closely with partners day to day. Instead of offering a remote experience, the teams on the ground in these markets will work very closely with their partners.