Meet Barracuda’s Alli Oneal, a finalist in CRN’s Women of the Year

We’re excited to share that Alli Oneal, Senior Manager of Global Partner Programs and Partner Experience at Barracuda, has been recognized as a finalist for Rising Star of the Year in the inaugural CRN Women of the Year Awards. Hosted by The Channel Company, these awards honor exceptional women, companies, and allies who have demonstrated outstanding leadership and innovation within the IT channel and tech industry.

To help you get to know Alli a little better, we recently sat down to talk to her about her journey at Barracuda, what she enjoys most about working with our channel partners, and some lessons she’s learned along the way.

Q&A with Alli Oneal, Senior Manager, Global Partner Programs and Partner Experience

How long you've been with Barracuda, and how has your role has evolved?

I've been with Barracuda for just over three and a half years, and my role has evolved quite a bit over those few years. I started in March of 2020 in a role of Channel Field Marketing Manager for the West, supporting all of our value-added resale partners on all things marketing, including overall marketing strategy, management of marketing budgets, execution, and support on marketing campaigns, programs, events, and enablement. In the spring of 2022, I was promoted to Senior Channel Field Marketing Manager for the West and took on some additional responsibilities for the team, including ownership of the MDF program, Campaign-in-a-Box program, and several other strategic projects. In June of this year, I was promoted into a new role to Barracuda, as Senior Manager of Global Partner Programs and Partner Experience where I am responsible for overseeing our global partner programs and partner experience.

What have been some highlights along the way?

First and foremost, getting to know a lot of our partners in our channel community. Everyone's a little bit unique, so it's fun to be able to build programs and specific strategies around different partners based on their individual strengths.

In my channel field marketing role, a memorable highlight was the development and launch of the Campaign-in-a-Box tool, which provided our partners with packaged, self-service demand generation campaigns that included e-mail campaign content, social campaign content, live and virtual event kits, and other supporting assets based on a specific solution focus. I got to see that project from its infancy, where the campaigns and resources just lived in shared folders, all the way through to now being a self-service tool available on-demand in the Partner Portal.

The introduction of our new MDF program and co-op program globally was another big highlight for me, and I think it certainly was a game-changer for our marketing programs partners. We used to have a homegrown tool, which got the job done, but we've evolved that to a strategic, best-in-class platform. We partnered with a third-party vendor to complete an analysis of our existing program and then help build our new MDF program module from scratch based on our specific needs. The new tool offers a simplified user experience while also adding a little bit more accountability for partners in terms of justifying how funds were used and what the return on our investment was. With the new tool, we also expanded our offerings of marketing activities that we can offer for partners to use their allotted MDF or co-op funds for. It was great to help drive that project together with our channel marketing teams globally and to now see how introduction of the new tool helped to improve and simplify our partners’ experience when collaborating with Barracuda on marketing programs.

What do you enjoy most about working with our channel partners?

I love that each partner we work with is completely unique. Of course, they may have certain things that are similar, but at the core, everyone's needs and requirements are different, and so are their preferences, strengths on which solutions they sell, and strategies to grow with Barracuda. I like that these differences create this diverse channel community,  that truly pushes us to think creatively to understand the best way to work with all these different partners.

I'm also a relationship-driven person, so I love being able to build relationships with our partners, really get to know them and understand what's working for them. The channel ecosystem is changing every day — partner models and needs are diversifying, and we have to continue to evolve with them to stay relevant and meaningful. For that reason, I really appreciate any opportunities I get to engage with our partners face to face and gather feedback on what’s working, what’s not, and what they need from us to be successful. I look forward to continuing that engagement with our partners globally and putting their feedback into action, incorporating it into our programs and offerings.

What is the most important lesson you've learned from working with our channel partners?

The main thing I've learned working with channel partners is that it has to be simple. We have to remember that our partners work with so many different vendors all the time so what we offer to them or what we ask of them has to be as simple, repeatable, and meaningful. A simple example is a partner’s experience with our Portal. One partner may have 10 or more other vendor partner portals that they are required log into to register deals, find pricing information, claim rewards, etc. So, it’s crucially important to me that we make ours as easily accessible, navigable, and beneficial as possible so that when they're in there they don't have to spend a ton of time looking for the things they need to be successful. Partners are busy, and we have to be willing to accommodate that if we want to grow together with them. It's so easy to get stuck in the mindset of thinking, “We are the vendor, and every single partner in our ecosystem cares about everything we're doing no matter what,” which is just not the case.

I was at an industry event last week where they put it this way: We need to stop taking so many selfies and take more panoramic pictures. I thought that was so applicable to the vendor world. It's so easy to think me, me, me, selfie, selfie, selfie. But really we need to think about how our offering plays into that larger panoramic view, the bigger picture for our partner. We need to put yourself in their shoes first.

What are your goals for your team and for the channel partners you work with?

Right now, I’m really focused on refreshing and evolving our partner program to make it a truly modern, next-generation offering. As I mentioned before, our channel partners are evolving and need more than the partner programs of yesterday to work successfully with a vendor. So, that’s priority No. 1.

Equally important, though, I am also driving to help improve our partners’ everyday experience with Barracuda, whether that's improving the onboarding process of a brand new partner that's joining our program or making deal registration or renewals easier for an existing, highly engaged partner. How do we make that as simple as possible?

And finally, I also want to strive to really keep the communication loop open with our partners: continuing to capture partners’ feedback and implement it into what we're doing. We have our Partner Advisory Boards and Partner Advisory Councils, which are great events, but to me, the events are only as good as what we do with that valuable feedback. I want to make sure that that feedback we’re capturing is being incorporated and implemented in improvements to the partner program and partner experience.

What’s something partners would be surprised to learn about you?

I wanted to study studio art in college and pursue a career in the arts. I ended up studying business and minoring in studio art and then pursuing a career in channel marketing, but I’ve learned how to bring my creative side into everything I do. I might not be painting canvases, but the channel has given me lots of opportunities to put my imagination to work and think creatively about ways to help our partners.