Application for Manager, Global Partner Development

Application for Manager, Global Partner Development

Liz Mercuri

 

SIE colleagues,

Thank you for considering my application for Manager, Global Partner Development. This is an exciting opportunity to cultivate a team which will make a huge impact on the quality of content curated, improve partner sentiment and help grow the PlayStation brand.

This role first piqued my interest after spending time with Partner Development at Melbourne Games Week. A member of PD had not attended many gaming events in a professional capacity and I felt that I was naturally able to put the individual at ease and give them confidence by sharing my experience and advice. 

Based on this experience, I believe that Partner Development requires training, restructure and refocus. 

Training is integral in giving a team confidence in their abilities, direction and sense of belonging in a corporation. As an SIE Account Manager, I appreciate that the volume of content presented to PlayStation is colossal. To manage and prioritise this, takes great organisational skills. I have learned the intricacies of the end-to-end Partner experience. This coupled with my experience in Account Management, prioritising content and partners and liaising with key teams such as Partner Marketing and and Portfolio, allows me to extend that knowledge and experience to Partner Development. 

Reassessing the structure of the team will identify pain points and allow focus on priority areas such as content scouting and prioritisation, identifying process improvements and enhancing both Partner experience and team morale. My work on the CRM roll out and Partner Onboarding with ‘Project Jumpstart’, will allow me to make a start, aiming to remove the friction of Partner onboarding, content curation and prioritisation and responding to common queries.

Refocus, through definition of a mission statement, would give the team clear direction, objectives and indicators of success. I feel that content scouting and subsequent prioritisation would be integral parts of this mission statement. At Unity, as a Technical Evangelist, I often scouted content to demo new Unity features, with an emphasis on emerging territories. Whilst my knowledge of the US Games Industry has room for improvement, my knowledge of UK, Europe and now Australia sets solid foundations for educating and empowering a small, growing team.

All of the above aims to create a team culture where there is improved morale through a sense of purpose whilst ensuring alignment with business priorities.

This is a new era for Partner Development and I look forward to their potential being realised, facilitating their success.

Many thanks for your for your time and consideration,

Liz Mercuri

My Vision for Partner Development

The team vision outlined below is based on working alongside Partner Development, experience in SIE Account Management and reflects working practice and team structure in Technical Evangelism at Unity. 

Team Priorities and Focus

If I were to be successful in this role, based on my current perception and understanding, the items outlined below would be my areas of focus for Partner Development.


Training 

Partner Development should have an understanding of the end-to-end Partner journey. This will allow, 

  • Redirection to self-serve more confidently and efficiently.

  • Increased engagement cross-team including Account Management, Store, Portfolio and Partner Marketing.

  • Improve Partner sentiment.

  • Greater insight into business needs.


Team Function/Mission

  • Pain-points - Mind-map the current pain points of Partner Development, to create an action plan and determine success.

  • Team Mission Statement - Feeding in from GTPRs mission statement, what drives the team in terms of measuring success and the desired output. Having alignment on team mission, will allow the team to better sense of purpose and prioritise their workload accordingly.

  • Team Motivations - What is important to the individual in their working life (e.g. being heard, having autonomy) and what is important to them in their personal life (e.g. exercise, travel). Understanding individual motivations will create a more cohesive team structure.


Team Structure and Reorganisation 

Please see a proposed Team Structure below. 

Account Assistant

  • Partner Onboarding - Ensuring that the Partner has attended or is enrolled on to the Indie Briefing Series, that hardware has been allocated/ordered, that Partners have access to Partner Help Centre and know the function of DevNet, PHC tickets, GFQ Web etc (Self-serve).

  • Events Coordinator - Having an eye on key upcoming events, but also scouting lesser known events and in underrepresented regions. Scheduling travels and coordinating schedules for Partner Development Coordinators.

  • Partnership Tracking - Aids Portfolio in staying aligned on upcoming pipeline and status of Partnership evaluations.

Partner Development Coordinator - Scout

  • Scouting - Attending events looking for content which PlayStation could lean into. When not travelling, making industry connections and using multiple resources to uncover upcoming content. Scouts pass any flagship content to Curation.

  • Pitching & Partnerships - For Partners whose content is approved for pitching, Scouts attend pitch meetings and submit for prioritisation and/or Partnership evaluation. If a Partner title, they engage with Partner Marketing and Portfolio on communicating key information.

Partner Development Coordinator - Curation

  • Signposting - For anything other than pitching/pitch-prep, reiterating self-serve. For any content/partners provided by ‘PDC - Scout’, Curation ensures that the Partner has been onboarded and if not, is passed to our Account Assistant. 

  • Triaging - For any content provided by ‘PDC - Scout’, Curation, Curation ensures that the Partner has the appropriate pitch assets before moving forward with prioritisation and/or pitching or baseline support.

  • Pitching & Partnerships - For Partners whose content is approved for pitching, Curation attend pitch meetings and submit for prioritisation and/or Partnership evaluation. If a Partner title, they engage with Partner Marketing and Portfolio on communicating key information.

Currently, both PD Coordinator roles would need to be rolled into a single headcount. However, if headcount allowed, I feel that these roles would be better served separately and in each region, SIEA, SIEE and SIEJA.

I believe that full Partnerships should be passed to Account Management, with PD’s focus being Indie and Diversity.

I believe all members of PD should have Steam Decks and/or PCs at home to easily access playable builds. Work being done by Julio for ‘play session’ spaces would also feed into this.

Implementing the above will help support a progressive, inclusive and positive team culture.

Thank you for reading!