Strategic Alliance Magazine Q2 2017 - 44

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

N
A
T
I
O
N
A
L
I
N
S
T
R
U
M
E
N
T
S

In 1995, NI inaugurated an annual developer conference
in Austin, Texas, to serve its burgeoning community of alliance partners, application experts, and loyal customers.
Engineers and scientists from around the world attend
NIWeek at the Austin Convention Center to participate
in technical sessions on the company's products as well
as the underlying technologies. Alliance Day, an exclusive
pre-conference day for partners, provides business, product, and technical training while offering opportunities for
regional sales alignment and networking. Presenters include NI's leadership team and in-house authorities as well
as experts around the nation and world. Selected industry integrators and suppliers showcase their products in a
large exhibition hall, and various customers and university students present papers on their work with NI tools.
In 2012 with the revamp of the Alliance Partner Network
program, the team grew partner conference attendance by
42 percent in a single year, and has since averaged 10 to 15
percent attendance growth year over year.
The corporate program management team that helped to
spur the growth of alliance partners includes an extended global team of partner managers and sales leadership
in the Americas, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and
Africa regions. The team functions as the core for all program governance, marketing and promotion, and business
alignment strategy for the company.
In March 2016, NI won the ASAP Innovative Best Alliance
Practice Award, which is given to a company for "individual alliance management tools or processes that have
made an immediate and powerful impact on the organization and/or the discipline of alliance management." The
company received the award for outstanding achievement
of a best practice with their innovative partner directory
that allows customers to search across the partnering ecosystem and access in-depth profiles of partner capabilities,
certifications, ratings, and reviews from customers. Implementation included the creation of advanced search
functions, markets, keywords, mapping, and other tools.
As a result, the number of National Instruments partners
grew from 600 to 1,000-plus over two years.
"Learning from industry leaders in alliance management
is invaluable. Our continued growth depends on guidance
from experts in this field. Currently, only a few of our leadership team are active with ASAP, but we hope to grow that
engagement in the very near future to take advantage of

44
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | Q2 * 2017

the support, resources, and education available through
ASAP," Valim says. "Participation in ASAP webinars, chapter meetings, and conferences is invaluable. Validating that
we are executing well is very encouraging, and learning
from industry leaders is extremely valuable. Both presentations and roundtable discussions are great opportunities
for best practice sharing."
Today, Valim continued, "Our team is considered trusted
experts within our company based on our historical experience and knowledge of current industry standards and
best practices. We provide guidance to the business and
are included in negotiations when a new partner is under
consideration."
NI is currently working with large technology companies,
integration and consulting firms, and product development companies to further core capabilities in the test,
measurement, and control industries. "When spending
time and energy making technology work gets in the way
of focusing on a solution, we know that's a big problem. So,
our goal is to enable engineers to get their jobs done faster
regardless of their application or industry. Our partners are
experts in our platforms and can help customers get to a
solution faster."

Partnering will continue to foster
NI's success in developing products
and solutions.
"In today's world of converging technologies, NI and our
alliance partners are tackling this new industrial age by
collaborating to provide a foundational platform and solution-oriented approach," Valim says. "Our products and
partners are in almost every industry that creates things, so
we're confident we'll be able to help NI customers continue
to be successful." n

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine Q2 2017