Accelerating Partnerships: APTIS' Rocketing Journey with Fun Inc
Discover how APTIS GmbH, an Atlassian Marketplace Vendor, transformed their partnership strategy with Fun Inc, achieving fast and scalable results.
Introduction
APTIS GmbH is an Atlassian Marketplace vendor and solution provider dedicated to helping teams achieve greater efficiency and control over their project management processes. With Lean Management in mind, their goal is to minimize complexity and improve teams' long-term productivity.
Their flagship app, Epic Sum Up, enhances the Jira experience by providing users with powerful tools to track, visualize, and manage complex tasks easily. With features like custom aggregations and collapsible sections, Epic Sum Up simplifies handling large projects, allowing teams to stay organized and on top of progress.
The Goal
Along with their general goal of having 15 new partnerships by the end of the year, the APTIS team was considering some form of company representation at Atlassian Team 24 US. Instead of sponsoring a booth at the event expo hall and spending additional funds for travel and accommodation, their idea revolved around hiring an expert (person or a team) to be the face of APTIS/Epic Sum Up.
The Challenge
One of APTIS’s challenges was finding the best role for this on-site project. As a small team, their primary approach is technical and analytical, focused on delivering great products and services to their customers and users.
Balancing the existing internal resources, APTIS had two solid engagements with partners and ongoing marketing initiatives to boost their reach. However, they knew they needed to spend more time and effort on their Partner Program and overall appearance in the Atlassian Ecosystem. In a conversation with their Atlassian TPM, they agreed on setting a KPI of 15 partners signed for their program until the end of 2024. This was primarily based on feeling and moving forward with the mindset that this number may change in a positive or a negative way.
Implementation - How Fun Inc Made it Happen
After an initial discovery call and discussion on APTIS’s most pressing needs, together with Fun Inc they’ve agreed on the desired outcome:
Atlassian Team 24 (US) strategy, focusing on building substantive partnerships with solution partners globally and gaining additional visibility of their flagship “Epic Sum Up” app.
The project was three months in length and divided into two project splits, each consisting of three major phases:
Project Split 1: Atlassian Team 24 US (before, during, after the event)
Phase 1: Planning and a full internal audit of current sales and marketing strategies to understand the project's full impact and potential.
Phase 2: Atlassian Team 24 (US), where Fun Inc employees network and introduce the APTIS team to solution partners attending Team24, thus laying the groundwork for building substantive partnerships after the event.
Phase 3: Converting the event leads into qualified opportunities and being heavily focused on developing partnerships with global partners after the initial Team24 touch.
Project Split 2: New Partner Recruiting Strategy and Partner Program
Phase 4: Developing a partner recruiting strategy with clear documentation of the process, possible outcomes, and assigned responsibilities across team members.
Phase 5: Post-event planning and partner engagement overview, where new deals are logged into APTIS’s internal systems with details about the deal’s active status, assignees, and next steps.
Phase 6: Evaluation and expansion of the Partner Program, which phase includes a review of the current pipeline, relationship potential, and strengths and weaknesses of each engagement.
The Outcome
With Fun Inc stepping in as APTIS co-pilots, Atlassian Team 24 in Las Vegas went above and beyond the expected results. Before arriving to Vegas more than 30 companies were fully engaged, and post the event - thanks to the combined efforts of the APTIS team with Fun Inc’s consultant as their crew member - more than 20 were fully in the pipeline for APTIS’s Partner Program, with planned conversations after the event.
The Impact
What impact did the collaboration with Fun Inc have on APTIS?
Better alignment on goals
As businesses grow, they find themselves at a crossroads: whether to remain satisfied with their current level or expand to a broader audience. For APTIS, this decision involved where to spend time and effort to maximize the company's presence while still being comfortable with its team, scale, internal and external engagement.
Don’t be afraid to seek help
There is no secret that high-performing teams consist of different characters and skillsets. In the face of their team, APTIS had analytical engineers, great developers, and a solid sales and marketing team, but they felt they lacked a certain area of knowledge. By hiring Fun Inc, they hired years of experience in living, selling, and engaging in the Atlassian Ecosystem — the vast network of contacts allowed both companies to move fast and achieve more.
Lifelong learning
Despite the end of the current contract, APTIS is keen to keep the relationship with Fun Inc as a continuous learning curve. After a joint, live 1-day workshop, both companies had the opportunity to meet, discuss possible next steps in business, and even join an Atlassian Community Event in the area.
Lessons Learned
Continuous improvement through learning is Fun Inc’s core company value. We faced our share of ‘lessons learned’ in our work with APTIS and are happy we had their support along the way.
Miscommunication and misalignment
We experienced a miscommunication issue in our activities, eventually leading to a short misalignment across teams. Even without impacting our project as a whole, it raised a red flag. Thanks to the established transparency and honesty, APTIS and Fun Inc resolved it in a matter of days.
Better evaluation of internal assets, roles and responsibilities
Having an external advisor who can provide a different perspective and feedback on your project is often a crucial part of success. But also, it can show the underutilization of existing resources or the need for restructuring. In this case, APTIS saw that they would greatly benefit from pure advisory work and would assign all operational tasks to internally hired team members.
Keep the momentum
Change is always challenging, and adding more force to your team can increase its speed in an uncomfortable way. It’s like driving faster without all the safe equipment. Both teams experienced a change of pace, but they found a way to take the most of it without losing sight of the end goal.
Lessons Validated
As we are firm believers in transparency, this project again proved how vital the transparent relationship is. It’s a pure human desire for a person to be always right and flawless, but in real life, we should accept the possibility of being wrong and find a quick and intelligent way to communicate and resolve what’s proved to be a mistake.
What We Achieved Together
🖇️ 44 Partners engaged
🖋️ 11 Partner contracts signed
📝 17 Partner contracts in review/signing phase
Thank you to our friends from APTIS for allowing us to share their journey with the world, and we look forward to our continuous collaboration!