The Benefits of Preferential Treatment - Acquia-Style

Today we want to take the time to announce that Digital Echidna has officially been recognized as one of Acquia’s Preferred Partners.

Although we have been partnered with Acquia since 2010, both companies have grown substantially over the past 7 years. With that growth has come a few growing pains -- but we’ve also enjoyed the benefits of increased efforts towards strategic alignment or, in this case, realignment.

Digital Echidna has been a Community Partner with Acquia under its old partner program. However, Acquia rolled out a new program to start the year and we had to undertake a little dotting of the “i”s and crossing of the “t”s to ensure that Digital Echidna retained its rank as one of Acquia’s top partners.

It was a job I happily undertook! Acquia holds high standards for its Preferred Partners as it relates to alignment with the company’s goals, targets, and requirements. Fortunately, Digital Echidna’s proven Drupal commitment, dedication, and expertise made it much easier to check off all of Acquia’s boxes.

There are several factors in place that one must display to become an Acquia Preferred Partner. But there are two, in particular, that align closely with what we value at Echidna:

• Building strong, mutually beneficial relationships; and
• An emphasis on talent and expertise, in this case the Acquia Certification Program.

Let’s start with the second point first. Digital Echidna takes great pride in being one of the top-four Acquia Partners in terms of holding the most Drupal certifications in the world. We have at least 22 certified developers (some holding multiple certifications); five of whom are both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 Grandmasters (and one of our staff was the world’s first Drupal 8 Grandmaster!) 

We don’t hesitate to support our staff, encourage ongoing development, and showcase our talent and expertise. After all, our huge bench strength of talent (over 65 employees) is what makes Echidna such a successful Drupal firm.

Of course, a partnership can’t be successful without building strong mutually beneficial relationships. In the past year, Echidna and Acquia have gone from two companies who have a delivery/hosting relationship to a collaborative sales and marketing machine that brings a solution-based offering to our clients. We sell together, we market together, we win together! And the most benefits are seen in our clients’ happiness and satisfaction with our projects and respective organizations.

The partnership doesn’t stop there. Digital Echidna is a(n):

• Acquia Certified Training Partner, so we would love to help your teams get up to speed on the Drupal system and all the benefits it can bring to your organization;
• Acquia Delivery Enabled team, which means Acquia puts its trust in Echidna to also implement its amazing tools on top of its powerful cloud solution including Site Factory, Lift, DAM, Journey, and NodeJS applications. This allows Echidna and Acquia to deliver enterprise solutions that provide a full digital experience for our clients and their end users;
• finalist for the 2017 Acquia Engage Award in the higher education category.

So what’s next? Many more collaborative opportunities and projects, more dual marketing initiatives, more award-winning projects, and next year when our renewal comes up? Global Select Partner status - Acquia’s most elite partner status!

Keep watching for more awesome case studies of great projects that come out of this great strategic partnership.