One Size Does Not Fit All: Building Partner Ecosystems in Emerging Markets

The question that keeps surfacing in emerging markets is how to modernise a channel and partner ecosystem for scale while conforming to the cost model and ROI expectations of the developed world.

The honest answer is that you cannot. One size does not fit all.

What the developed-world model assumes

Anyone who has lived, worked and travelled through emerging markets knows they are full of opportunity and carry challenges that do not appear in a Western go-to-market plan: collection risk, currency volatility, political instability, patchy digital infrastructure, and in places extreme poverty.

The constructs of commerce that are simply available in developed markets — and most of the mechanics that work in developing ones — do not transfer to true emerging markets without flexibility and patience built in from the start.

Consider the scale of the problem. Microsoft’s CEMA region, Central and Eastern Europe plus the Middle East and Africa, spans roughly 110 countries. How you drive at-scale transformation there will differ from how it is done in the United States, Canada, the UK or Western Europe. And how the channel delivers the last mile of a customer’s journey has to differ too.

The leapfrog is real, and the price point is not

A significant trend across these markets is the leapfrog — customers moving from dark to cloud, and increasingly straight into AI, without passing through the intermediate stages the developed world took twenty years to climb.

That creates an obligation. If the intent is to democratise AI, the price point of AI-infused solutions is still out of reach for a great many customers. Vendors and partners have to come together on out-of-box thinking: low-price product SKUs, low-touch training and onboarding, and different mechanics for the channel and for commerce itself.

Why this is a commercial argument, not only a moral one

So that everyone from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia, and from Latvia to Turkey, has equal opportunity, the ecosystem has to be willing to make hard decisions collectively — where profitability, while still important, is not the only North Star.

Responsible investment now does more than help the people living in those countries. The emerging markets of today are the major economies of tomorrow. Consider where China and India stood twenty-five years ago, where they stand now, and where they are heading.

A partner ecosystem designed only for markets that already work is an ecosystem that will be late to every market that starts working next.

What this means for how you build

If you are designing a partner program intended to operate across both developed and emerging markets, the mistake is a single set of economics applied everywhere. Margin structures, payment terms, certification requirements and MDF eligibility that make sense in Frankfurt can be actively disqualifying in Lagos or Karachi — not because the partners are weaker, but because the underlying commercial infrastructure is different.

Design for the variation deliberately, or watch your coverage map quietly stop at the borders of the markets your program was built for.

There is an African proverb worth keeping in view here: strength is nothing without courage. This calls for both.

A version of this piece first appeared on LinkedIn as “One Size doesn't fit all”.