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, the B2B arm of Bolt, provides companies with a centralized platform to control, monitor and manage their employees' business travel and transportation needs. As part of their growth strategy, Bolt Business launched a comprehensive partnership program spanning multiple affiliate, referral, co-marketing and sponsorship channels — unlocking new opportunities for collaboration and lead generation.

Managed by Roisin Kirk, B2B Strategic Partnerships Manager, the program has scaled quickly. With ɫ��ֱ��’s platform providing the infrastructure and support to streamline key workflows and scale efficiently, Bolt Business’ partnership program has customers acquired from over 35 countries across three continents — and has grown revenue from this partner program by an average of 30% MoM since launch.

How Bolt Business shifted from individual workflows to scalable impact

To grow their partnership program at the scale and speed they envisioned, Kirk and the team needed a platform that could support their goals.  

“Individual workflows for discovery, recruitment, legal reviews and invoicing meant scaling up from partners in single figures to hundreds was literally going to be impossible without a huge amount of human resource,” Kirk explains. “Those different workflows just become a bit insurmountable in terms of scaling the program up without a platform like ɫ��ֱ��.”

Adaptability drives Bolt Business’ strategy, allowing them to work with a diverse range of partners and tailor partnership models to fit their goals and growth.

“My role is primarily about finding different partners and also partnership structures to support Bolt Business' sales and marketing initiatives globally,” Kirk shares. “As many in the industry know, partnerships can mean almost anything. And at Bolt Business, we take that on as an exciting challenge: maximum creativity and maximum impact. And we need a platform that can support that.”

Fast, friction-free onboarding builds better partnerships

When it comes to scaling a new partner program, speed and clarity matter. This is especially true when onboarding new partners on a global scale across multiple models. Here, Bolt Business relies on ɫ��ֱ�� to streamline the onboarding process in a way that works well for the business and for partners.

“The ɫ��ֱ�� platform provides the mechanisms that we need to find partners and ensure that they're comfortable with our terms and our offering in a really streamlined way,” says Kirk. “It's great for us, beneficial for our partners, and the speed of it is just incredible.”

Thanks to ɫ��ֱ��’s automations and built-in workflows, Bolt Business is able to onboard new partners quickly — without sacrificing clarity or alignment. 

“We can go from a hello to fully onboarded within a working day if we want to.”

Consistency that fuels confidence and creativity 

While creativity isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to partnership strategy, it is indeed a driving force behind Bolt Business’ partnership program — but creativity flourishes best on a foundation of consistency, which ɫ��ֱ�� helps provide. 

As Kirk explains, “It's a brand-new channel for us, and the ɫ��ֱ�� platform has allowed us to be really creative about the way we drive business leads to our amazing Bolt Business sales teams, especially through partners that we wouldn't have known existed and, importantly, across global markets as well. So, the fact that it's a consistent and reliable lead channel for us means that we're able to feel confident in our strategy and really empowered to scale the program.”

“Truly the sky is the limit — and at Bolt Business, limits don't really exist.”

Experimenting with engagement — and winning 

One standout example of how ɫ��ֱ�� has helped Bolt Business think outside the box to drive partner growth is with the challenges feature. Challenges, which are fun, time-limited opportunities for partners to engage with a vendor’s program beyond their usual incentive structure. Essentially, they’re a fresh way to help boost engagement, motivate partners and test new strategies.

When their ɫ��ֱ�� Customer Success Manager, Greg Dawkins, suggested they consider challenges, Kirk says they decided to give it a shot with modest expectations, but with the clear goal of driving partner activation and partner engagement and productivity.

“Honestly, the results just kind of blew me away,” Kirk says, adding that “Twenty five per cent of the partners that we included are now really productive on the program, and that's continued beyond the challenge.”

At one point, Kirk adds, “About 45% of the program's revenue came from those challenge partners that we wouldn't have engaged with had we not run that initiative. We now plan to run a challenge like that every quarter to hopefully have the same impact on results.”

Unlocking untapped value with ɫ��ֱ��’s Discovery Tool

Part of the success of the Bolt Business partnership program has come from thinking outside the traditional partnership models — and ɫ��ֱ��’s Partner Discovery Tool helps make that possible. By surfacing partners that wouldn’t otherwise be on their radar, the platform has become essential to finding high-performing fits in new markets.

“We use the Partner Discovery Tool, and it's fantastic for finding specific strategic partners in different markets. We found some of the best results actually have come from partners that we really wouldn't have known existed without the Discovery Tool — smaller, slightly more niche partners,” Kirk says. “That's been a revelation.”

Kirk also highlights how support from their customer success manager has helped them find and evaluate new partner opportunities more strategically.

“Greg is fantastic at driving some of our focus towards some areas in terms of pointing out which partners might be a really good strategic fit for us. Then, we can find them in the Discovery Tool and see their profile there.”

Using data to stay aligned and on track

For a fast-scaling program, visibility is everything. For Bolt Business’ partner program, Kirk leverages ɫ��ֱ��’s Performance Reporting to track progress, anticipate monthly revenue and make data-informed decisions.

“The tracking for our commission payments is essential in real time of even the invoicing because we can know where we are during the month,” Kirk notes. “I do weekly reports for my manager on where we are commercially and it works ideally for us.”

The reporting tools also help the team evaluate and fine-tune their strategy.

“It's fantastic for us to be able to do a snapshot,” Kirk says. “I know if I go into the ɫ��ֱ�� platform performance reports and X number of clicks, X number of signups, etcetera, that we're either on track or we need to push that engine a bit more.”

Less admin, more impact

Managing a fast-growing partnerships program requires staying focused on high-value work and strategy — not getting bogged down with manual tasks and workflows. For Kirk, ɫ��ֱ�� makes a big difference and helps keep the focus where it belongs.

“I just find it so helpful. There are a few partners where, mostly due to the structure or because of their own method of working, we can't use ɫ��ֱ��, and the difference is mind-blowing,” Kirk says. 

“With the partners that we've got on the platform, they are just easy to deal with, easy to manage. You can focus on the relationship aspects versus the actual administration of the partnership. It just makes such a difference — and I definitely can't imagine managing a program without it. That's a headache I definitely don't want.”

And, by centralizing partner operations into a single platform, ɫ��ֱ�� empowers Kirk to handle much of the program’s day-to-day work independently without relying on a lot of cross-functional coordination.

“I still have a spreadsheet or two; I struggle to get away from them,” Kirk shares. “But, to be able to be empowered as an individual to do a lot of the management of this myself with just one platform is super helpful for my own day-to-day life.”

ɫ��ֱ�� also mirrors the kind of value Bolt Business delivers to its own customers: simplicity at scale.

For example, Kirk notes the value of ɫ��ֱ��’s invoicing function.

“I mean, this is what Bolt Business ourselves pitch as a product value, to be able to have single invoicing as a business versus hundreds or thousands of individual invoices. It's just completely black and white in terms of the difference.”

Enabling what may not otherwise be possible

Kirk notes that ɫ��ֱ�� doesn’t just save them time: it unlocks strategies that simply might not happen otherwise.

“It's almost less about time saved,” Kirk says, as without ɫ��ֱ��, “it just wouldn't be possible to do certain strategies or initiatives.” 

“To be honest, it’s literally green light or red light.”

One example of this that Kirk shares is how the team now runs a scalable event strategy using event partners through ɫ��ֱ�� instead of relying on traditional sponsorship structures.

“That means there's so much more flexibility about which type of events we can get involved with and how quickly we can uplift that involvement. It allows us to really focus on the creatives rather than those legal, financial, administrative and structural elements.”

A fast-growing program with measurable impact

Since launching the partner program, with ɫ��ֱ��’s platform serving as a strong foundation empowering their operations, Bolt Business’ partner program has seen strong month-over-month growth. 

Specifically, Kirk shares that revenue from this program has grown on average 30% MoM since launch, customers acquired through partners are growing on average 37% MoM, and leads driven by partners are growing on average 32% MoM.

Their results are especially promising, especially considering how new the program is. “It's a brand-new lead channel from us,” Kirk explains, “so we were literally going from zero around nine months ago.”

“In terms of partner recruitment and partner productivity, it's been very heartening that the quality of partners that we've worked with, and it's really validated our initial hopes for this initiative.”

Working hard and smart for success — along with ɫ��ֱ��

For Bolt Business, launching a partner program from scratch was both a challenge and an opportunity. With ɫ��ֱ��, they've built a foundation that supports today’s goals, and also scales with the speed and ambition that defines their tomorrow.

“I’m most proud of the truly ground-up approach that we've taken with this new channel,” says Kirk. “Every new partner, every new customer — it's all from scratch. And that's probably what I'm most excited about as well, because we do feel like we have a platform and a program that can scale with us.”

Kirk adds that what sets their relationship with ɫ��ֱ�� apart is the sense of collaborative partnership and proactive support.

“It feels really great to be working with a platform that feels very responsive to what we need — both when we ask for something, and also anticipating what we might not know we need, like extra reporting tools. And working with our customer success manager, Greg, feels really collaborative. That's brought a lot of feel-good factor to the process.”

Indeed, Bolt Business’ partner program shows no signs of slowing down. Backed by a strong platform and support from ɫ��ֱ�� alongside their strong strategy, they’re fully embracing one of Bolt’s core values. 

As Kirk shares, “You know the phrase work smarter, not harder? At Bolt, we work smarter and �󲹰�����.”

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