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By Therese Van Ryne | Dec. 23, 2025
Stronger Together: How Zebra’s Channel Leaders See a Collaborative Future
As a communications strategist, I live for a great story. I recently had the distinct pleasure of hearing five incredible ones during a special CRN Women of the Channel podcast. The conversation with Zebra’s 2025 honorees brought to life a theme I see playing out across the tech industry: we achieve so much more together. Our relentless pursuit of innovation finds its greatest expression through the power of our leading ecosystem, a truth our guests illustrated with powerful real-world examples.
The Ecosystem in Action
The discussion showed how we help customers achieve optimized workflows through connected collaboration. Becky Gowan, who leads our channel sales in North America, shared a fantastic success story with a Fortune 500 manufacturer. The solution for the customer involved a strategic partner, multiple Zebra ISVs for enhanced software functionality, and deep integration with platforms like SAP and ServiceNow. This intricate teamwork delivered streamlined workflows and improved process automation, perfectly illustrating how a united partner ecosystem solves complex problems.
This spirit of partnership echoes across the globe. Yvonne Lim, speaking from her experience in the Asia-Pacific region, told a similar story. She described how a partner, facing a customer’s growing needs, leveraged Zebra’s PartnerConnect program to team up with an ISV. Together, they delivered a complete solution, securing a happy customer and opening the door for future collaborations. Her story underscored how success in a region with both emerging and mature markets requires partners to build strong value propositions and, crucially, to work together.
Global Reach, Local Victories
That ability to adapt defines success. Teresa Huaman offered a powerful perspective from Latin America, where countries increasingly demand the latest technology at affordable prices. Her team worked closely with resellers, analyzed the competition, and developed a pricing strategy that empowered distributors and fueled an incredible 62% growth in partner capillarity over four years.
This demonstrates a core part of our philosophy: a profound customer commitment means understanding and responding to the specific pain points our partners and their customers face. We believe the work we do makes work better for organizations everywhere, and that starts with equipping our partners for their unique environments.
Charting the Future of the Channel
Looking ahead, our conversation uncovered the trends shaping the future. Unsurprisingly, AI stood out. Maria Busato-Davlantis spoke about leveraging AI to help partners get the information they need faster, a key part of our vision where frontline operations everywhere become more digitized, automated, and intelligent. She also shared her excitement for upcoming enhancements to our PartnerConnect program, which will simplify processes and free up our partners to spend more time focusing on what they do best: serving customers.
This focus on smarter partnerships represents another significant trend. As Jing Liu noted, partners increasingly seek data-driven relationships that focus on delivering solutions and measurable outcomes. This push toward specialization and value-added services means the strength of a company’s partner program matters more than ever. It reinforces our role in designing the hardware, software, and automation solutions for the frontline, built on decades of market leadership.
These stories offer a glimpse into the expertise and forward thinking that our channel leaders bring to our ecosystem every day. To hear the full details and gain a deeper understanding of the future of the channel, I invite you to listen to the complete podcast episode.
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