Qualtrics’ chief partner officer on why he loves the Australian market

Sean Holcombe spoke to CRN Australia at the recent X4 conference in Sydney.

Experience management platform Qualtrics sees Australia as a massive partner market, with a slew of opportunity that they haven’t taken advantage of yet.

This is according to Sean Holcombe, chief partner officer at Qualtrics, speaking with CRN Australia at X4 Sydney, he said the country is the centre of the company’s market opportunity and growth.

"To be honest, we have not yet fully captured the opportunity. By that I mean we have a very significant set of omnichannel customer experience capabilities,” he said.

“I would say that over the last 12 months, we've seen a lot of Australian companies start to want to grow with us at a faster clip than ever before in that way.”

Holcombe explained that Qualtrics has built a “relatively healthy” survey based business in Australia over the past number of years.

“But maybe faster than any other market in the broader APJ region, we're seeing Australian businesses want to scale what we would call omnichannel programs,” he said.

“How do we collect qualitative information from calls or chats or social media beyond survey to really get a better grasp of the conversations of why employees or customers behave the way that they do.”

From an opportunity perspective, Holcombe said it has been one of the fastest growing markets for them in the region.

“It has the most exponential curve on a maturity scale, from an opportunity standpoint. We also have a huge hub here in Sydney with our offices, and we have an office in Melbourne as well that we continue to invest in,” he added.

Holcombe applauds their Australian partners for helping them understand the market better.

“What we found is working with partners here in Australia, much like partners in other markets that are regional, there's a better understanding of the needs of the Australian market when we can work with companies that are based here,” he said.

"There's an opportunity to feel like our partners can help bring Qualtrics to the front door of a client and be a part of that client team.”

Working with local partners, also means investing into the local community, Holcombe explained.

“We're also really committed as a company to invest in the local economy and community, not just with the jobs that we hire, but how do we help accelerate businesses that are also located here and in the regions where we serve,” he said.

Zoe Nicholson, VP partner sales APAC at Qualtrics added that the Australian market is open to testing new technologies and solutions.

"We're not shy to give things a go, try new technologies. We're not as risk averse as some other countries that I deal with across Asia or globally,” she said.

“That's a really cool thing about Australia, which means for us and our partnerships, in some ways, sometimes we're a little bit ahead because we've tried and errored, we've failed, we've learned, and we've moved on.

“New Zealand is the same, in ANZ we're just willing to test out a bit, and the customers are willing to maybe go first. We can often be ahead of the game in many ways, because we're a little bit more testy and risky,” she added.