As we have progressed towards a society that has almost eradicated gender biases, where women have taken up superior roles and are leading through diligently. About a decade ago, women in tech space was a rare term, but with the scope expansion and the willingness to lead, women have emerged victorious here as well. With dedication, they have led the firms to a path of success.
One such woman, who with her extensive experience in the tech field has risen up the ranks is Denise Sangster. With an ability to tackle some of the most difficult problems and with her sheer dedication, Denise is among the influential personalities who keeps motivating and inspiring everyone!
The Enterprise World is Proud to feature Denise Sangster in this issue of The 10 Most Empowering Business Women to Watch in 2021.
Denise Sangster – A Journey towards Excellence –
For 25+ years, Denise Sangster has advised the world’s most innovative technology companies, helping and inspiring them to build cutting-edge disruption through next generation partner ecosystems that generate predictable and sustainable revenue, growth, and profitability, and aligned with required customer business outcomes. She currently serves as the President and CEO of Global Touch, a tech consulting firm.
Like any company, growing industry reputation is a journey. She was known within the partners and customers she was working with, but had to find an opportunity to scale her reputation. This certainly wasn’t the easiest thing to do and required patience and perseverance. Denise got through this by writing columns for a collection of IT publications around the world, which gave her the visibility she needed in her early years of her business.
I am a woman, but I never considered this a barrier to success.
Denise believes gender bias still exists around the world, but it is less of an issue compared to when she started her career. She also believes a gender-diverse workforce allows technology companies and their ecosystem partners to serve an increasingly diverse customer base. And the best news, the result is more and more women are now acknowledged and known for their capabilities and experience, which empowers the overall technology industry
As Denise’s career progressed, male executives wanted her to meet with daughters to give them a role model, particularly those male leaders living in Europe and Asia. As a result, she was invited to many of their homes for dinners or weekend activities when she was staying over a long weekend, particularly in a different part of the world.
Six global IT executives decided the European market needed an IT event that would provide a learning experience, networking, and partnering opportunity for executives. They also decided I should do it and announced that I would be running it without talking with me first… This was a career changing moment!
When Global Touch launched the first pan-European IT conference focused on partner ecosystems. At the time, it was unusual for a female to work at a management level in the IT industry, particularly outside the US market. Initially Denise had male colleagues tell her they did not need an “American girl to help Europeans with their business”. She viewed this statement and others as opportunities to turn them into supportive peers and ultimately some into clients, both of which she accomplished.
Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.
Walter Gretzky
The Company- Global Touch
Global Touch is a partner ecosystem-focused strategy and go-to market transformation consulting firm for the hybrid and digital computing world. Since 1990, Global Touch has created game changer opportunities for its clients who are investing in the moment to leverage the future. Their data-led management consulting services helps technology companies create partner success.
“Our sweet spot is helping technology companies grow predictable revenue by unleashing the power of partners.”
Many technology companies continue to use strategies, programs and investments that worked fifteen years ago. These obsolete partner models are limiting the potential for success and opening the door to emerging and established competitors.
At Global Touch, they look over the horizon to lead their customers through conventional and creative partnerships, while navigating unparalleled market dynamics and changes.
The Products and Services-
The IT industry, customers, and partners are re-imagining how to adapt or embrace what’s next in the digital economy. Learning how to transform business processes around the potential of hybrid computing and multi-cloud is critical while realizing promised business benefits to customers and sustainable profitability to partners.
Looking for answers?
Global Touch helps identify where and how products and service innovations can help accelerate profitability for a technology companies’ partners in this new era.
We focus on finding the best solutions to your most complex pain-points.
The company is anchored in a longstanding foundation of helping clients stay ahead of disruptive market trends by leveraging a combination of their insights, in-field research, transformational strategies and next generation services that only a seasoned channel savvy organization can deliver.
They help their clients stay a step-ahead of market trends and capitalize on emerging opportunities, including how to:
- Accelerate growth
- Improve profit predictability
- Meet changing consumption models
- Drive sustainable partner profitability
- Deliver business outcomes
- Create continuous lifecycle momentum (success)
“Knowing and understanding “customer needs” is at the center of every successful business, whether it sells directly to individuals or businesses. We are continuously looking to add value to our clients, identifying disruptive innovation, and helping them build predictable revenues and profitable partners.”
Global Touch launched the first IT industry’s Partner Profitability calculator in September 2020.
We know that driving partner profitability should be the #1 objective and foundation of every channel investment made by an IT company. In essence, partner profitability is an IT company’s profitability.
The Global Touch Partner Profitability Calculator™ is built from years of in-the-field data across thousands of global partners and it provides IT companies with a snapshot of their partner programs and investment profitability impact in less than 5 minutes. It will help IT companies discover how your company stacks up with a rating from laggard (the lowest rating) to innovator (the highest rating).
Why is partner profitability important? The ugly truth is partners prioritize IT companies that create sustainable profitability opportunities for their businesses. They invest in those IT companies’ product roadmaps and proactively participate in their readiness programs. Unfortunately, most partners suffer from profit underperformance, which means they never fully commit to selling their products or services or invest in their future, leaving IT companies with a sliver of their partners’ revenue potential. For the majority of IT companies, this is their #1 problem and they don’t know it or they don’t understand why it is happening and how to fix it.
The Work Culture-
Through Denise’s journey, she and her team have offered a range of services including consulting, conferences and publications. She has sold several to keep her focus on the core capabilities: consulting.
There are a few things in every company that define culture. For her team, we are always looking to improve on their performance with clients and treat them as clients for life. She is also a big believer in continuing education—formal training, distance learning, seminar participation, webinars, and so forth. She also likes to celebrate the little accomplishments and not just the big ones.
Being a dog lover she believes that there is nothing better than having dogs in the office. It lowers the stress, improves morale, promotes productivity, and makes better socialized dogs instead of ones that are left at home; which is why she made it a practice to bring in dogs on their Friday Lunches, something that made everyone cheerful and ready to take on challenges!
When in business, competition is inevitable. It is something that can hold you back or propel you forward. Denise is the kind of person who likes to take competition in a positive way. She says,
“Every industry has competition—some more than others. I believe the IT industry has very robust and healthy levels of competition. The IT industry thrives on competition and attracts exceptionally competitive people. Since the mid-1990s, the IT industry has seen spectacular successes and failures through competitive moves. Whether that be accomplished through products, licensing, features, business models, partners, global reach, or changing customer behaviors, competition thrives on disruptive innovation, which is the back bone of the IT industry. The new challenge facing the IT industry is the digital economy, which have competition coming from everywhere.
The best way to cope with competition in the IT industry is to continually disrupt your own model, products, value add to customers, and so forth. You also need to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your whole picture, as well as the pieces that make up the IT industry.
Competition is a motivating factor for me. I am always looking to add value and work harder for our clients.
Denise’s competitive nature was shaped early in her life. Starting at the age of 5, she had a swimming coach that was a three-time medalist at the 1948 Olympic Games. “She taught us to train like we’d never won and compete like we never lost and to remember every competition is about winning and learning, not winning or losing.” These are life lessons Denise uses every day of her business life.
The Enterprise World is always keen on finding that one thing that keeps the entrepreneurs motivated and moving forward, particularly in the heat of intense competition. When Denise was asked the question of what motivates her, she had quite an unusual reply. But then again, that is what makes her an inspiring personality! She said it is a passage from “Alice in Wonderland”.
“My favorite part of the book is when Alice meets the Cheshire Cat and asks which way she ought to go and the Cheshire Cat responds,
“That depends where you want to get to…”
And this is what energizes Denise!
