A stronger weave weathers the storm

Writing recently in ChannelPro, Lutz Lambrecht, chief partner officer at SNP Group, observed that strong partnership ecosystems show greater resilience in the face of economic turbulence and market disruption. He highlighted value alignment, versatility, and adaptable technology as key factors that build partners’ and vendors’ resilience.

Lambrecht described how stronger alignment on solution positioning, definitions of customer success, and the measurement of outcomes puts partners in a stronger position to communicate value and build credibility with customers.

The power of partner and provider alignment resonated with me as the CEO of a transatlantic digital agency that aims to help UK and US organizations in the public, private, and membership sectors to navigate cloud, digital, and AI transformation.

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Data from the Professional Associations Research Network (PARN) report 2025 [pg33) revealed that members expect their professional body to guide how to safely implement AI, and even which LLMs to select:

• 82% told PARN that they want best practice guides and case studies on AI implementation
• 67% want training on AI
• 64% want their professional body to regulate the use of AI in their profession
• 63% want their professional body to vet and provide access to approved AI tools

There is clearly a chain of trust at work. Members are looking for AI guidance from their professional bodies. In turn, professional bodies seek trustworthy support from their digital platform providers. And, finally, digital platform providers rely upon their technology partners.

Navigating change together

When you’re responsible for the performance, stability, and security of an organization’s website or e-commerce platform, you need full confidence in the technologies that you select to build it. But it goes deeper than that. You must also have faith in the people within the vendor’s organization and its core values.

During the recent Codegarden conference in Copenhagen, Karla Santi, CEO of American digital agency, Blend Interactive, presented the findings from the platinum partner’s survey of 40 small, medium, and large digital agencies, undertaken by Promethean Research. This revealed:

• The average revenue growth over the past year was 7.5% compared to 20% in previous years
• Sales cycles are extending
• Clients are seeking more business case framing and asking ROI questions earlier in engagements
• Agency leaders are feeling the strain of navigating market disruption
• agencies that reduced services and specialized achieved above-average growth

Based on the survey data, Santi encourages fellow digital agency leaders to refine their services and protect their relationships.

In the first episode of the Loom podcast, I sat down with Mats Persson, CEO of the open source CMS platform company, Umbraco, to discuss how business leaders can remain confident in such uncertain times.

We discussed how the vendor’s values of transparency and flexibility are tightly aligned with our own, and how this helps us to build trust with customers.

An open culture opens doors

Referring back to Lambrecht’s point about value alignment, it was Umbraco’s openness that first attracted us to become a partner. We were able to make an informed decision about whether it was the right organization and technology for us to partner with because, to a large degree, we were permitted to look behind the curtain.

We could see what the company was really like, what its enterprise aspirations were, and how central partners really are to its growth strategy.

As Persson commented during the podcast discussion, “You gain more trust if you're open and willing to share your challenges. Partners can handle the truth. If you're transparent with them, it’s an opportunity to fix something, and that becomes more trustworthy.”

Gaining confidence in the cloud

Vendor trust was a really important aspect in my decision to put Umbraco Cloud forward when speaking to our clients about their projects. The company’s transparency solidified my decision to move from us hosting customers’ sites to building enterprise customers’ projects on Umbraco Cloud.

There was an established feedback loop of Umbraco listening to partners and customers. This is not merely performative. Umbraco has demonstrably acted upon feedback. That gave us enormous confidence that when we saw a pain point, we knew it would get fixed.

We didn't switch everything over all at once. We started to feel it out, to see how the support functions. We explored what the challenges were and what we needed to change to get the best out of it. We liked what we saw and started to build increasingly complex sites on Umbraco Cloud.

Quality beats quantity

As Lambrecht wrote in ChannelPro, “The strength of a partner ecosystem is not defined by the number of partners in a network, but by how effectively partners are aligned, enabled, and equipped to deliver value in changing conditions. At the core is a shared value narrative that brings together complementary strengths of vendors and partners, with both combining to create a joint proposition that is clearly differentiated.”

We talk about trying to build a culture of openness within our organization and with our stakeholders. But if we were dealing with a CMS vendor that didn't share those values, wasn't providing the necessary level of support, and wasn't adapting the product based on feedback, that would show to the end client.

Ultimately, carefully choosing who you work with is a major consideration as we all navigate these uncertain times together.

We are not unique. Indeed, many other companies are on the same journey of discovery to get to a point of established trust and create the foundations of current and future success.