Preview - not generally available.
Vendor Strategy as a Service.
Delivered personally.
Watch the Partner Compass overview - chapters and summary
Four phases. Twelve weeks. One vendor strategy.
Health Check across six domains. Vendor portfolio audit. Existing programme scorecard. Output: a single, scored view of where you sit on the Lighthouse Ladder per vendor.
4P scoring on every vendor and distributor relationship. Four-quadrant placement: True North, Strong West, East Reach, Heading South. Output: portfolio map with strategic intent per vendor.
12-month execution plan. MDF claim calendar. Deal registration cadence. Tier-advancement targets per priority vendor. Output: signed-off vendor strategy.
Quarterly business reviews. Vendor relationship orchestration. Optional Cotillion onboarding for the vendors where automation moves the needle. Output: measurable tier movement.
We score what most partners never measure.
Each domain has three weighted questions, each scored against industry benchmarks from ZINFI, Channelnomics, Canalys, and Omdia. The output is a single 4P score per vendor - and a quadrant placement that tells you what to do about it.
- Vendor portfolio composition
- MDF utilisation and rebate stacking
- Deal registration discipline
- Programme tier positioning
- Co-marketing and case study velocity
- Distributor relationship leverage
The framework behind every vendor decision.
Stop running 60 vendors on hope. Plot them on Stack Fit × Market Fit, score them against the same rubric every quarter, and trigger a disposition pathway: Invest, Sustain, Bridge, or Retire. This is the playbook we run inside Partner Compass engagements - explore each artefact below.
Plot every vendor on two axes.
Select a vendor on the matrix to view its classification, scores, and the disposition pathway it triggers.
Swipe to see the full matrix →
Two halves of a job most partners never fill.
The operations half covers registration, claims, credentials and deadlines across the vendors you carry. Partner Compass tracks them manually, by people. Where Cotillion CORE supports the vendor portal (AWS Partner Central and Microsoft Partner Center today), it registers deals and tracks their approval status, so the work is a hybrid of the two. The judgment half is a named person who runs the reviews, the negotiations and the portfolio calls. Built for VARs, SIs and MSPs carrying more vendors than headcount.
Registration, claims, credentials and deadlines tracked manually, per vendor, as part of the Partner Compass engagement. Cotillion CORE, an MVP, registers deals and tracks their approval status. MDF and rebates are on the roadmap.
A named human who runs your vendor reviews, negotiates the exceptions and signs off the portfolio calls. Every vendor-facing artefact is human-signed.
Every qualified deal registered with the right vendor, with approval tracking and protection-window management.
Rebate thresholds monitored, MDF surfaced and claimed, proof-of-performance packaged, deadlines consolidated into one calendar.
Certification expiry, programme requirements, key-person risk and programme changes - in plain English, before they bite.
QBRs with your top 3-5 vendors: pipeline contribution, registration velocity, cert coverage, campaign ROI.
Quarterly review against the framework above - 4P scoring, Stack Fit × Market Fit placement, and a disposition call per vendor.
Margin and rebate bands, MDF exceptions, programme concessions, and rejection disputes are handled by your team using current data.
The job doesn't exist today; the owner absorbs the admin and the strategy never happens.
Your alliance manager covers one vendor well - we cover the rest, and give them their week back.
Your partner managers shouldn't be reconciling deal registrations. Cotillion CORE registers each deal from one record, a person approves every submission, and status syncs back from AWS Partner Central and Microsoft Partner Center.
Common questions about Partner Compass
What's actually included in Partner Compass?
Who is it for?
How long does the engagement take?
How is it priced - and what does the Founding Partner programme change?
What happens after Phase 4?
10 places. One on one with our Founders.
Founding Partners get the engagement at the inaugural rate - and a permanent seat on the methodology advisory group as it evolves. After the first ten, Partner Compass moves to the standard pricing tier and is delivered by certified practitioners.
- Delivered by the FoundersNot certified practitioners — the people who built the methodology.
- Locked-in Founding ratePreferential pricing across every future Partner Compass engagement.
- Advisory group seatPermanent input on how the methodology evolves.