Freshworks Refresh 2025 | Laura Padilla, Freshworks & Mac Bullock, WhitlockIS

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Laura Padilla

SVP, Global Channel and Alliances

Freshworks

Mac Bullock

Vice President, Sales & Marketing

WhitlockIS

play_circle_outline Introduction of Laura Padilla and Mac Bullock at Freshworks Refresh event.

play_circle_outline Empowering Partners: Freshworks Unveils Simplified Global Partner Program to Enhance Reselling and Service Delivery Tracks

play_circle_outline Whitlock is a premier technical partner for Freshworks in North America.

play_circle_outline Freshworks Embraces AI to Simplify IT Solutions While Maintaining a Customer-Friendly Approach

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Laura Padilla, Freshworks & Mac Bullock, WhitlockIS

Laura Padilla

SVP, Global Channel and Alliances Freshworks

Mac Bullock

Vice President, Sales & Marketing WhitlockIS

In this conversation at Refresh North America 2025, Laura Padilla, senior vice president of global channels and alliances at Freshworks, and Mac Bullock, vice president of sales and marketing at Whitlock Infrastructure Solutions, join theCUBE’s Bob Laliberte to explore how Freshworks is “uncomplicating” service management through its partner ecosystem. Padilla breaks down the redesigned global partner program, built around simple tracks for resellers, services providers, solution partners and sales consultants, and explains how Whitlock has become a premier t... Read more

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Bob Laliberte

>> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Freshworks Refresh. We're here at Oracle Park in San Francisco. I'm Bob Laliberte and I am joined today by Laura Padilla, SVP Global Channels and Alliances for Freshworks and Mac Bullock, the VP of Sales and Marketing for Whitlock. Welcome. Thank you very much for joining me.

Laura Padilla

>> Thank you for having us.

Mac Bullock

>> Thanks for having us.

Laura Padilla

>> Excited to be here.

Mac Bullock

>> Yep. Thank you.

Bob Laliberte

>> Absolutely. And so, Laura, you're the SVP of Global Channel and Alliances so why don't we start by talking about Freshworks, basically your global alliance and partner program?

Laura Padilla

>> Yeah, that would be great. I'm excited to talk about it. We launched a brand new partner program in May of this year, and what we wanted to do is really simplify the partner experience and add more value to partners. We did was we made very simple tracks where partners can choose the type of customer value they want to deliver. That's whether they want to be a reseller, whether they want to deliver services to customers, or if they want to do both and be a solution provider. We also have a sales consultant track for partners that simply want to bring us in leads and get paid a commission as well. And so, it's simple for partners now to choose their track and then be able to participate in the program appropriately. We also have requirements and benefits associated with each of those tracks, and as a result we have over 600 partners now in our program in various tracks. Whitlock is one of our premier technical partners, services partners, here in North America as well. And we've partners, we've had a partner program here for 10 years, but this year really focused on how we help partners scale globally as we reach a billion dollars plus as a company.

Bob Laliberte

>> Wow, that sounds great. I know I'm being a little cheeky here, but is it safe to say that you uncomplicated your partner program?

Laura Padilla

>> We did. That's exactly right. I like that. Yes, we did. The feedback I had from partners was there was so many different ways to get paid. It was super complicated and it changed a lot over the years, and so I wanted to do is really simplify it for partners, but also empower partners to be able to let them build practices around Freshworks and really decide how much they wanted to make, that they could really own the customer billing experience overall.

Bob Laliberte

>> Excellent. No, I think that sounds great. Mac, I want to turn to you. Maybe introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about Whitlock and maybe what you're most excited about after being here today, hearing a lot of the news that's going on from a partner perspective.

Mac Bullock

>> Right. Well, Laura said it. For Freshworks, we're primarily an implementation partner, but Whitlock's been around, we said we've been around the block 20 plus years. We're an IT operations management partner. So when you think of everything that falls in that realm, observability, network management, automation, obviously IT service management, enterprise service management, asset management. So I tell you all that because we do a lot. We have an advisory service that provides strategic consulting around all of that and best practices too. For us though, I will say our primary means of going to market is via Freshworks and with Freshservice and Device 42 around that enterprise service management and enterprise asset management story, and that's why we're here. And Laura, as you alluded to, thank you. We do consider ourselves their go-to partner around implementation services. But one thing you asked, why are we excited to be here? First of all, we get to see our friends in the channel, at Freshworks obviously, because we have to do so many of these discussions just on a video conference. And the face-to-face time really is, it's amazing. It's paramount to building that relationship and making that even stronger than it is right now. But we love seeing the customers. I mean, we can think we know because we have our own portfolio of clients and customers who know Whitlock, who know Freshworks, but meeting new clients and new customers and hearing their stories, that just makes us a better partner for Freshworks, but ultimately just a better service provider.

Bob Laliberte

>> All right, that sounds great. And let's see if we can go back in the time machine for a second and talk about why you chose originally to partner with Freshworks and what that's meant for your customers. What key capabilities? What value they're bringing to your customers as well?

Mac Bullock

>> Okay. Well, I'm going to say it's twofold, and so I'm going to go for maybe the qualitative reason first. We take our values in Whitlock very seriously and some companies say that, but we live them. We have a handful of things that really mean something to us, attitude, effort, integrity, and discipline. And so, again, we've been in this game for a long time, so we vetted a handful of enterprise service management partners. And I'll tell you those values, Freshworks fit every single one of those, and from the top down. We talked to the executives to some of the other partners. We talked to folks in the sales team. So those values mean everything to us. If we're going to partner with somebody, they have to reflect what we represent as a company, number one. Now, number two, the solution was outstanding. Again, in the marketplace right now, we'll get to this I think later, but there are players in the market that I think care about revenue and revenue and more revenue. And fair enough, you're running businesses, right?

Bob Laliberte

>> Right.

Mac Bullock

>> It's a lot more than that here. The Freshworks solution in and of itself, it is, we talk about it uncomplicates, service management. We call it the easy button in a lot of ways because we're easy to work with. It implements quickly and efficiently. And then, running that solution is so cost effective and is so non-labor intensive that I think when customers see that for the first time, it blows them away. And we saw that when they demonstrated that to us so we said we hit a home run here, and we didn't really know about Freshworks. Long answer to a short question. The values align with us perfectly as human beings, number one. But number two, the solution itself is exactly what the marketplace needs, needed it then and needs it even more now.

Bob Laliberte

>> No, I think that's great here. It takes you out of that vendor relationship and moves you into a strategic partner relationships, right?

Mac Bullock

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> Delivering that value and for the long term, not just a transaction.

Mac Bullock

>> Right. Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, absolutely. Cool. I want to go back to you, Laura, if I can. In your role, what are some of the things that you've seen Freshworks really be able to address the IT challenges in the organization and how does your partner program allow you to address those issues at a greater scale?

Laura Padilla

>> Well, IT challenges are the heart of what Freshworks does and providing solutions to our customers. And the number one thing that we're doing now, we had a ton of product launches and releases is AI. AI is the heart of everything that we do. And Mac talked about it beautifully also about how we really uncomplicate solutions for customers. If you think about some other vendors that have really legacy archaic, hard-coded solutions that are extremely expensive from a services delivery point of view, we're the opposite of that. We really want to uncomplicate and make it easy for customers to adopt a solution that works for their companies. We're at the heart of that. Now, our launches that we just announced around AI further even adopt that message. And so, we think about AI agent and studios and insights that allows our customers to even be more empowered around how they can really address those challenges more effectively. And then, we have partners like Whitlock as well that can help a customer's scope design what that needs to look like, and then implement that and then do migration services too.

Bob Laliberte

>> Absolutely.

Laura Padilla

>> When they move from other more complicated solutions to ours as well. And on the partner side, on the partner program side, just launching a new program, making it simpler, we're investing really heavily on tools and systems enablement, marketing, regional support. We know that the only way we're going to grow globally is through partners and that's where we're investing heavily.

Bob Laliberte

>> No, I think that's so smart. Investing in your partners to accelerate your growth and it sounds like growing you are. Everyone we've talked to has talked about the momentum you've got going, the amazing growth that you've had across the business, and again, partners are going to be key to that growth. So speaking of that growth and customers, I wonder if we could go back, Mac, and talk to you about maybe talking about some of your earliest joint customers and really what was the problem? How did the combination of the two companies really deliver a meaningful result?

Mac Bullock

>> Well, there is a large player in the market and we know who they are, and again, they're everywhere. So you asked me originally why did we start this partnership? The fact that it was uncomplicated, we saw the value of that, but we got to see that early on. We are specialists in a few areas. One is doing this, we do service now replacements all the time, I'll just say it. We are good at that for a multitude of reasons. But the reason why is because of what you said before, it's that solution, while very good in a lot of ways, but it is very expensive, not just to purchase but also to maintain. And not just to maintain, but as you go forward, when you're adding on certain capabilities, et cetera. Again, that was one of our initial opportunities. It was around replacing that solution, but it's more than just a tool replacement. I mean, you can't just take one tool, put another tool in and say, "Okay, we're good," and high five and leave and pat yourself on the back. It's so much more than that. You have to understand organizational change management. It's a big deal to take out a solution like that and put in anything. Again, we have a lot of different things that we're good at. I think one of those is making sure that a customer can come to us and say, "I understand you're a tool expert and I know you've said this tool is outstanding and we understand why. How can we really take this massive solution out that we've customized, that we've tailored and you can do it in a handful of weeks or months and we're going to be ready to go on day one with training and everyone's going to be bought in?" They're like, "No way." Part of that sales process is making sure they understand that we've done that elsewhere. And again, back to your question, early on that's what it was. It was making sure they were comfortable, not just replacing a tool with another tool, but making sure that they understand the value to the business, and the aftermath of the implementation, how much easier and uncomplicated it's going to be to run our solution versus what they had in place. And I'll tell you, that same scenario is what we do all the time and it's prevalent throughout the marketplace.

Bob Laliberte

>> No, it sounds great. It sounds, again, it's not just about the technology. What I heard loud and clear is also about the people in the process-

Mac Bullock

>> Completely....

Bob Laliberte

>> And how do you accelerate them through that so they can get faster time to value for the implementation that they're doing. And again, not just, "Hey, we transition to technology," but you help train the people. You help get them up to speed faster. You help transition their processes into that new tool to enable them to be able to leverage it more quickly.

Mac Bullock

>> You cannot just implement. Your duty as a real consulting firm is to train all the way throughout your implementation. You have training sessions that you have scoped out, but every interaction with our consulting team is a training session. Again, when we go live, they are ready to run their solution and it blows them away. When they go from where they were before to a Freshworks, yes, they understand the solution piece is outstanding and it is uncomplicated. But again, the training that they get throughout that implementation evolution is what gets them ready. And so to your point, the people are ready, the people there are ready. And then we win, the customer wins and Freshworks wins, and it's one team.

Laura Padilla

>> And in this era of AI, everything is now about more efficiency, simpler. Customers are expecting that. It's essential now as part of their experience. Vendors like us know we have to address that. And then, we have amazing partners like Whitlock that are also able to deliver that to our customers.

Bob Laliberte

>> And in all the research that I've done, what I've seen is people are trying to adopt AI. There's this big time to comfort. And what really helps them is that handholding, that blue printing.

Mac Bullock

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> That we've done this before, here's how to do it, and helping them to accelerate their time to value for the AI is so hugely important. And it sounds like you've already got that figured out and are doing that.

Mac Bullock

>> Absolutely. You will not have a successful implementation if the people there don't believe, not just in the tool, but how are you going to implement and train them and get them ready to go live? And that's part of being a good consulting team.

Bob Laliberte

>> There is one thing I wanted to bring up. You mentioned earlier you announced a new partner program, and I was able to read the press release on that when I was flying in last night. One of the things that I wanted to ask you, Mac, is in that, I want to make sure I get it right here. The quote was, "You're structuring our entire go-to-market around the Freshworks partnership."

Mac Bullock

>> Yes.

Bob Laliberte

>> That's pretty bold statement for a partner to make that claim.

Mac Bullock

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> What's driving this and maybe talk to us about the momentum that you're seeing that made you comfortable doing that.

Mac Bullock

>> Well, remember when you asked me what we do, we do a lot. We call it intelligent service management. So to answer your question specifically, that intelligence service management with Freshservice is the centerpiece of our entire practice because that leads to better observability, which leads to better automation, which leads to better AI. So what's the centerpiece of that though is making sure that you implement enterprise service management correctly and successfully. Because once the IT team and the organization has a real legitimate enterprise service desk, then we can talk about what it means to have real observability. And then, we could talk about real automation where you're taking a bunch of manual processes and tasks that people should not be doing who are well-paid. They need to be doing high-level strategic tasks, not just doing repetitive manual stuff, for lack of a better term. But that's why we lead Freshservice, that lets us... All those other disciplines that we have in our portfolio, it all stems from having a successful enterprise service management solution in-house at one of our customers. And then we can go into everything else, like I said, with observability, et cetera, all the other parts of IT operations management. But you can't have those without a successful help desk solution. Again, that's what we see leading with Freshservice. That's what we mean. Everything else in the IT operation stems from having that enterprise ready service desk and everything else can go from there.

Bob Laliberte

>> Excellent. Now that sounds great. Laura, I want to give you the last word in this conversation. Talk to me about the critical elements of your partner program that you believe are going to ensure success for the partners that join and enable you to scale that to a larger partner ecosystem. So is it training, is it different resources that you're being able to deliver technical support? What do you think are the critical components that really will drive partners to join and drive the Freshwork story forward?

Laura Padilla

>> I mean, so there are some basic elements that we're building today that are going to be needed moving forward. We are investing a lot more in enablement because also we have so many new product announcements that we have to get our partners up to speed on that.

Bob Laliberte

>> Right.

Laura Padilla

>> We're investing a lot more heavily as well in go-to-market pieces like co-marketing, Localization in different languages globally, resources in region now to partners co-market as well. We also want to encourage our partners to spend more time in the field with our AEs co-selling more. Building that relationship with our AEs is really important as well. And part of the new partner program is we're also building swim lanes for our partners so that there isn't conflict between our AEs or our internal processes. We know that we want partners to be our delivery mechanism. We've worked really closely with our professional services team so there is no conflict between the internal folks and our partners, and there's clarity around that. We also want to encourage our partners and have them have multiple revenue streams. Whether that is the things that Mac talked about, consulting, design, implementation, migration services, as well as reselling licenses, and also maybe even just referring us to businesses and getting compensated for that, so multiple revenue streams on top of that. I think there's multiple ways for partners to invest, make money, grow with our business, and capitalize in this huge town.

Bob Laliberte

>> Got it. Well, it sounds great. Sounds like you've really thought it through very carefully and are delivering a solid solution that obviously your partners are embracing. I'm glad that it's not complicated, that you've uncomplicated it and made it simple for them to adopt just like your services. I think that's fantastic. And hey, thank you so much for your time.

Mac Bullock

>> Appreciate it. Thank you.

Laura Padilla

>> Thank you so much. It's great to meet you.

Mac Bullock

>> We love this partnership.

Laura Padilla

>> Thanks, yeah.

Mac Bullock

>> Thank you.

Bob Laliberte

>> You got it. Absolutely. And I want to thank all of you for joining us today. Stay tuned for more continuing coverage of the Freshworks Refresh event.