New Everpure ANZ partner lead discusses her new role and why it feels like “home”

Alison McQuarrie has more than 25 years experience in the Aussie channel.

Alison McQuarrie has been the ANZ partner lead at Everpure for only two months and she’s “loving every minute” in her new role.

“It has been the most incredible time. It feels like I am home,” she said.

Speaking to CRN Australia at Everpure Accelerate in Melbourne, McQuarrie has been in the industry for 25 years working at Salesforce and Microsoft and she said this one is “special”.

"As I've come to learn over the last eight weeks, I am deeply aligned to the channel strategy. One hundred percent channel always. That's a rare claim, and that is how we do business. It's part of our DNA,” she said.

“To lead a growing team in a channel organisation in a time and place like today, it is a privilege. I couldn't be happier.”

McQuarrie explained why she decided to work for the data management company.

“The focus on partners, on building ecosystems, on truly seeing partners as an extension of an organisation is what originally attracted me to the role. Everpure are known for that in the market,” she said.

“I've had the privilege two weeks ago of being in headquarters, meeting our founder Coz (John Colgrove), and meeting our CEO (Charles Giancarlo).

“I walked away from that even more excited in terms of our company strategy, our direction, the moral fabric of our organisation, how we care for the person first.

She added, “The shareholder return will follow if you do that. You hire the right people, if you retain them, if you support them, if you upskill them, then success follows, and that's what the company's seen in terms of its growth.”

As the IT channel is known for being built on relationships and trust, being person-first has helped McQuarrie in her role building the right team and continuing the strengthen partner relations.

“I can tell you categorically we are attracting the best talent in the market,” she said.

“When you have the capable and talented team that we have, and I'm fortunate to have inherited an incredibly talented team, it means that you are establishing trust and confidence with our partners and with our internal stakeholders, of which is an important function, it becomes easier.

“It's not easy, but it's easier.”

Looking at the market, she believes the opportunities for Everpure partners right now are “endless”.

"Something that I have observed in the last eight weeks is the depth of capability, knowledge and skill, intent, passion and drive. When I talk to these partners, as I've been doing over the last eight weeks, they talk about Everpure with a smile,” she said.

“They talk about the long history of the relationship, what we've managed to build together, and how we are going to tackle problems together in the future. There is a lot of goodwill, strength and confidence in our relationship. That is something that I am both excited by and energised by because then what comes from there is what's next, what else, what can we build already on top of that strong foundation?”

Being fairly new to her role, McQuarrie is still figuring out where every opportunity is for her and her partners.

"I can see a lot of opportunities for us to be able to engage more closely with our partners to execute better in our rhythms and to be able to deliver more ultimately through our customers, through our partners as one, and that as one is something that's really important to me,” she said.

“How Everpure our technical organisation, our sales organisation, and our channel organisation show up as one to our ecosystem and to our customers.”

While she’s only been in the role for eight weeks, McQuarrie has already been on the road seven of those weeks speaking with Everpure partners.

From those conversations, she is seeing a genuine degree of “excitement and anticipation” about Everpure’s expanded portfolio.

"What I'm seeing from partners is excitement. I'm seeing a drive to want to partner with us to seek out more enablement from our specialists that are incredibly talented and skilled,” she said.

"To be able to position themselves to be the trusted advisor to their customers, for the evolution that's coming our way in terms of data, AI, sovereignty, governance. They're seeking our support and our partnership to be able to engage with their customers to solve some of their deepest problems.”

As she is still learning the ropes at Everpure, McQuarrie said for the next four months she will have a “deep curiosity to understand”, and then she is going on a “listening tour”.

“I’m interviewing and chatting with every single account executive in the business to understand how the channels are supporting them, where are there gaps, where can we, with minimal pivots or help be able to mitigate some of those gaps,” she said.

“It's deep listening and learning. Once I know what those gaps are, you talk to me again in a few months, and I'll tell you how we'll solve them.”

Athina Mallis travelled to Everpure Accelerate Melbourne as a guest of Everpure.