Partnering Channeling Better Partnerships Through Partner Portal
Vision Document
Convenience
Contents Relationship Augmentation with Your Channel Partners Through Partner Portal
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Connect with Partners and Manage Them in a Digitized System
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Dedicated Platform with Secure and Automated Environment
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Challenges that a Partner Portal Meets
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Group and Role Management
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Partner Performance Management
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Asset Management
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Program Management
6
Dynamic Content Management
6
Marketing and Sales Forecasting
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Business Analytics
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Use Case
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Client
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Natural Practice
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Core Requirements
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Information Sharing
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Interaction and Communication Point
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Invoice Processing
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Case Generation
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Quotation Processing
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Managing Orders
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Partner Document Sharing
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Solutions That a Partner Portal Modules Renders Solution in 4 Categories
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1. Sales
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2. Marketing
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3. Logistics
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4. Support
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Partner Portal
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Essential Elements and Key Requirements of Partner Portal
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Personalized Access
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Onboarding Automation
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Programs Library and Management
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Training & Certification
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Business / Functional Planning and Contract Management
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Incentives Management
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Community
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How a Partner Portal Overpowers Your CRM
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Quick Return on Investment
21
Productively Scalabile
21
Focus and Precision on Business Needs
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Loquaciously Communicative with Partners
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Chat Feature for Real Time Assistance
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Adaptable to Digitization
22
Server and Cloud Based Solution
22
Secure and Safe Database
22
ERP or CRM Independent
22
Extra Functionality as Per Business Needs
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Secure Process with More Control to The System Admin
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Better Service for Partners
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Contact Us
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Vision Document
Partner Portal
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Relationship Augmentation with Your Channel Partners Through Partner Portal Connect with Partners and Manage Them in a Digitized System
But due to the additional licensing cost, organiza-
the number of participants, the involvement of
overloaded and messed up, which increases the
tion opt out to give access to partners. Also, the
With the growth of an organization; along with
inclusion of all the partners makes you system
the partners also increases. So, it becomes a
security and safety concerns for other crucial
tough affair for organizations to manage all their
data.
interactions. CRM software can manage all part-
Here, building a partner portal that can integrate
munication point between the organizations and
and can work as a dedicated solution to take pro-
partners via emails, phone calls or one on one
ner interactions seamlessly but it lacks the com-
with the existing applications of the enterprise
partners.
ductive as well progressive care of the partners.
It creates a demand of a medium through which
and automates the way organizations deals with
the organization officials. Hence, the best suitable
activities are also administered under a safe and
The Partner portal digitizes the partner activities
partners can connect and communicate with
them. Access of all the data and record of all the
solution here is an application that is completely
secure system.
customized, has the ability to place good com-
munication between partners and employees
and share information in real time. Partner portal
is a solution that meets all these requirements at
its best and can be defined as apt.
Dedicated Platform with Secure and Automated Environment
It is a common practice that organizations use
CRM or ERP or in some instances; both. These applications contain all the critical business
information that cannot be shared with partners. Thus, it restricts the enterprises to give access to
their internal application. Though partners also need access to some of the modules of the CRM and ERP system.
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Challenges that a Partner Portal Meets Group and Role Management
Asset Management
and localized access that we referred to in the
partners: product sheets, pricing sheets, program
This is closely in connection with the personalized previous section. For the success of your engagement with partners through a portal, you have to
set up multiple roles and multiple groups by partner tier, partner classification, partner business model, capabilities, etc. in order to customize
Think about the variety of assets used to train
information; web content and downloadable content in the form of e-books, case studies, fliers, videos or podcasts. These are assets you are constantly uploading to your portal. You must have a
what individual partners are able to access when
dynamic asset management system in place
If you are a several-million-dollar company,
your workflow significantly. Your partner portal
they log in.
that automates this process and streamlines
chances are you have a significant volume of
has to be able to do that.
who accesses the partner portal. When you
Program Management
information that is not relevant for every partner
upload programs, incentive, training—all of the
content your partners are accessing—it’s absolutely essential that you are able to tie all of that information back to the specific partner groups or roles you have created so they are exposed only to the most pertinent information.
Partner Performance Management
Successful performance management requires that you be able easily construct a clear picture that shows how a partner is doing, including
things like their sales volume, how they’re per-
forming in various functional areas, what programs they are attending, how many technical
people they have, how many marketing programs they have run, what sales campaigns
and/or initiatives they have pursued. You should
If you’re a marketing person, whether you’re managing channel marketing or channel sales, you’re
constantly running various types of marketing
programs, sales programs and training programs. Again, you have to be able to manage that process through a seamless interface.
Dynamic Content Management
The web content management piece of this
should seamlessly interact with the functional automation piece. How does your business plan
look? Can you easily edit it? Can you show varieties of relevant content through the plan or through a contract or an incentives page? That’s
the kind of capability you need to be able to leverage, and without having a PhD.
be able to look at all of these elements, figure out
what has worked consistently, and then create a performance plan that’s realistic.
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Your partner portals should be able to provide a unified experience whereby you set up these programs. Whether they are one-directional and informational or are interactive and require the partner to register or perform some other activity.
Business Analytics
This is certainly one of the most important capabilities your partner portal should have. A dynam-
ic business analytical engine that allows you to slice and dice the data in various ways to really understand what programs are working and why,
which partners have been most productive and why, and what specific steps you can take based
on the data to achieve a higher level of perfor-
mance with the parts of the channel that are performing less well than they should.
Business analytics can give you invaluable insights that allow you to intelligently reduce
Marketing and Sales Forecasting
Planning out marketing ROI by allocating market development funds (MDF) or co-op funds is essential in today’s economy. You have to know what has worked and what doesn’t. You should be able to put a marketing pipeline together and
track those leads as they are converted into the sales pipeline and ultimately closed.
In order to forecast ROI with a high degree of certainty, you need to know what programs and
initiatives have been successful. Without a truly
unified platform, it is almost impossible to do that.
costs—not only by eliminating programs and streamlining the portions of the channel that
aren’t producing, but also by focusing on higher-impact ROI programs that will drive your
growth forward. Your partner portal has to be able to do that.
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Use Case
Client A product development firm that has more than a hundred of partners who are collaborating with the
brand and selling the services through various channels. All these partners are dealing into various levels and with different degree of involvement. The organization is also having a need to manage their sales, logistic and other operations with partners’ assistance.
Natural Prac�ce The enterprise is managing all these partners through the CRM and lacks all the functionalities to manage all
sorts of partner activities. Thus there is a need of a Customer portal that can help the business to streamline the business.
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Core Requirements Information Sharing
Partners stand with a necessity to access all the product with product catalogue. They also need stay updated with the latest updates about the products, information and manuals of the recently launched products.
Interaction and Communication Point
In a business engagements, communication is the must to run a seamless business op-
erations. Partners have to interact with organization about their, requests, queries, complaints, feedback and about all other subjects that they have to deal with.
Invoice Processing
Portals are more secure as compared to the emails, hence, sending invoices through the portal is a better options. Sending invoices via email also generates a big thread whereas on the other hand, portals process the invoices in real time and in a systemized manner.
Case Generation
Partners often need to create a case and want to share it with the enterprise. These
cases can comprise various suggestions, use cases or any other information. Here, Partners do not have access to the CRM cases module and it also cannot be generated in the emails. Thus, it demands a new solution where partners also can generate cases.
Quotation Processing
Partners have to process numerous quotes for all the products and orders. Hence processing these quotes via emails make thing messed and sometimes confusing. Portal is a well defined system to manage quotes in an organized manner.
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Managing Orders
To share information about latest orders and process the existing orders, partners have
to use email, letter and other medium. They also need to share the status of all the orders with the organization. This whole process of managing orders has a vacuum of
dedicated solution, which manage all the orders and process them in real time while enlisting status of all the previous orders.
Partner Document Sharing
Partners carry crucial documents and enterprises also have a need to share important and confidential business documents with partners. As we have discussed earlier as well, email is also less secure and stands out of the preferences.
Solutions That a Partner Portal Modules Renders Partner portal comes with various modules that works as extended functionalities and helps the organization to give more control to partners and create a better network to
connect with them. The access to the Partner Portal will require registration of the partners and it will protect with a password. They would be able to view and access main resources that are available to them right from the dashboard.
Solution in 4 Categories
A dedicated Partner Portal where you will find valuable information and resources organized into 4 categories as per the resource needs. 1. Sales
2. Marketing 3. Logistics 4. Support
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1. Sales
This section will these tools and functionalities to help the partners alongside with the ease of the organizations.
• Sales tools and guides
These features of the partner portal will help partners to learn, adapt and implement appropriate selling strategy. This “how to sell” has helpful tutorials, podcasts, seminar or webinar recording and demos, which help partners to prepare a strategy and boost the business revenue. • Status Submission and Deal Registration Portal allows partners to businesses to submit the status of their existing ongoing operations. They can also register deals they are working and offering to supply chain. The portal helps the users to acknowledge the organization about the revenue generation from the deals they close successfully.
• Promotions
With partner portals, partners receive all the updates along with useful information about the promotions and campaigns run by the organization. Admin can add all the information related to such activities and share it with the partners. This module helps them to streamline their work approach that helps them to strategize their sales and product focus.
• Market Analytics and Products Reports
Enterprises can share critical information like analytics reports, product surveys, market research and others. It keeps such documents handy with partners, so they can access such documents with ease and as whenever they want. The portal also stores these saves these documents in the portal and keep a library of such files.
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2. Marketing
Under this section, organization can add function-
alities under which they can features latest update and information about the ongoing and planned marketing activities. • Marketing Resources
With the help of a partner portal, enterprises can provide marketing resources directly to the partners. Portal allows organizations to send marketing content, templates and messages with the partners. They can also share marketing strategy and activity blueprints, to make their marketing campaigns more successful.
• Customer Case Studies
Partner portal can store case studies and make it available for the partner to access it anytime they want. Admin can add these case studies, FAQs and white papers and other documents that are helpful in understanding the customer requirements and drive marketing tactics accordingly.
• Marketing Logs with Analytics
Marketing logs are helpful in tracking the success of previous marketing and the other important features of customer perspectives. Partner portal keeps such data and generates analytics reports that assist to marketing planning. It helps enterprises as well as partners to track individual performance and partners performances.
• Marketing Event Invitation and Overview
Whenever the enterprises organize an event or a marketing program, they do not have to send individual invitation for the following to all the partners. Partner portal will be sending all these information directly to all the partners. It can also schedule and invite partners for meetings. All these events and meetings will be saved in the calendar and set as a schedule. Portal will send reminders before the schedule and after the schedule, admin can save the its overview as well.
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3. Logistics
Another category that partner portal renders it ser-
vices are in, Logistics. As it is a complex part of the business process, partner portal helps organizations to streamline it. Lorem ipsum • Orders Modules
This module manages all the orders. Partners can send new orders and update the existing ones too directly through the portal. The portal will enlist all the orders at both ends i.e. at the admin panel as well as to the partners dashboard. It will also save all the orders and maintain a record of it right in the portal.
• Invoices Modules
Partner portal allows partners to download the invoices, directly from the portal and chuck the hassles of email. Partners will also be able to process the payment through a secure gateway directly on the portal. On making payment, the portal can download the payment receipt and payment confirmation.
• Stock Management Modules
A partner portal manages the stock availability in real time and keeps both the sides updated with its latest status. This module helps partners to update their stock status and maintain such information in a streamlined mechanism. The portal also helps admin to get the real time update of the stock available with all the channel partners.
• Product Module
Partner Portal comes with the product catalog module that enlists all the products. Admin can customize the accessibility of the product and scrutinize, which partners can access which product. This module will have all the products related information that is required for the partners. It will also keep a track of product release and will notify partners to go through necessary preparation and activities for good results of new products
4. Support
The core benefit of having a partner portal revolves around having a platform that connects the partners and the businesses with an efficient commu-
nication point. Partner Portal will allow users to
have an instant support and facilitate them to raise tickets for their requests, queries, complaint or any other issues.
• Ticket Raising
Partner portal eliminates the need for partners to call or email the enterprise officials for their requests or any. With this, Partners can directly raise their issues, queries or any other sort of business related requests. Admin can address all these queries directly through the portal and respond to them in minimum time.
• Live Chat
Live chat is one of the most helpful tools for enterprises. On a partner portal, it enables partners to seek support by sending instant messages directly through the portal. These live chat features are supported by chatbots, that respond at quickest without any human involvement. All the most asked questions are saved with these bots, which empowers the portal to answer automatically.
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Essential Elements and Key Requirements of Partner Portal Personalized Access
When you can automate these steps, providing
into the portal, all the features of portal avail-
sequentially through each critical functional
When an employee from the sales team logs
automated
checklists
that
take
partners
able to that individual must be related to sales.
area (marketing, sales, financial planning, tech-
There is no point for that person to be reading
customized according to a partner’s role—the
and plans when that individual is not responsible
importantly, it keeps partners informed about
technical person logs in and is fully focused on
ty to significantly scale your engagement
nology, etc.)— and when these processes are
about technical issues or marketing programs
process becomes highly efficient and, most
for those aspects of the business. Similarly, if a
what they need to do next. Here’s an opportuni-
technical content or content related to products
model global by various functions and roles.
and solutions, there is no point for that individual
to have access to content related to sales incentives or marketing development funds or any
other sales- or marketing-related materials. Per-
sonalized access is the most important way to
simplify the user experience and it is a feature that CRMs often fail to deliver.
It is crucial to attend that entire engagement through the partner portal be totally local-
ized—i.e., it needs to appear in the user’s own language.
Onboarding Automation
Partner Portal is a huge enabler, especially if you
have a broad channel with hundreds or perhaps
Programs Library and Management
As soon as your partners login, they should be
able to easily find the marketing programs that
are available in that specific quarter. For example, a salesperson logging in should be able to immediately access all of the sales programs available that quarter. If there are incentives or specific initiatives that are being rolled out in
that time frame, the salesperson should know about it. Whatever the program marketing, sales, initiatives, dividends, etc.—it’s crucial to promote such programs in a structured way, so
that individual users see the programs that are relevant to them at exactly the right time.
thousands of partners and are constantly
launching new products and bringing new partners into the program that you frequently have to
stair-step on 30- or 90-day cycles on various aspects of your programs.
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Training & Certification
Today, most of those engagements still happen
some level of training, whether you are in insur-
keep track of them, especially when a set of
your channel partners need to be properly
ager to another. It’s almost impossible for the
cation program, you may not have any formal
in many cases the manager actually loses that
program with multiple certification tracks.
ence through the partner portal is essential to
When you launch a set of solutions that require
through email, and it’s extremely difficult to
ance or real estate or franchises or technology;
partners transfers over from one channel man-
trained. You may have a simple training & certifi-
new channel manager to get up to speed, and
program at all, or you may have a very complex
engagement. Again, providing a unified experiaddress the problem.
In every case, however, the partner should be
able to log in and, based on their role and their own business initiatives, be able to find the proper
Incentives Management
tion path that will take them through the pro-
always know what additional rewards, rebates
online using a learning management system or
If this information is not revealed in a logical way
sions.
out where the incentives are, they will disengage.
The whole learning experience requires to be
partner programs today are simply not utilized.
sessions to clearing the certification sessions
programs relevant to their activities are being
add their inputs in a seamless way.
claim them when they meet the performance
Business / Functional Planning and Contract Management
There must be a unified experience in the incen-
training, create a learning path and a certifica-
Based on their performance, partners should
grams step-by-step and get educated—either
and market development funds they can access.
offline by attending your events and training ses-
and partners have to spend a lot of time figuring The outcome? Over half of incentive dollars in
completely unified, from attending training
That’s because partners struggle to find which
partners should be able to access, manage and
funded, how to apply for the funds and how to
Today, if your channel management team
engages with channel partners (especially the larger ones) to put together marketing or sales or
financial or technical plans, or perhaps put all of
these together into a single business plan, you
need a structured way to manage that process through the partner portal.
requirements.
tives area that links back to how a partner was on-boarded, what planning they did, what pro-
grams they attended and what training and certification sessions they participated in. In most
systems today, that information doesn’t flow together and thus requires way too much effort for partners to find.
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Community
We have entered a Web 3.0 model that’s moved beyond crowdsourcing. It’s about tapping into the
knowledge of the community. Think about it: Your channel partners hold a huge reservoir of knowledge about your products and solutions, how to position against the competition, about emerging opportunities that may be impossible for you to track directly.
Think of community as a vibrant forum where
partners can share ideas, pictures of events, current activities—not only generating excitement among partners, but also creating a corner
where you can find inspiration and ideas for improving your products, solutions and channel programs moving forward.
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A
Website
CRM
Contact Module
User
Customers
Authenticate User
Portal SignUp
Authenticate User
VeriďŹ ed User Portal Login
Manage Marketing
Manage Sales
Manage Services/ Customers
Manage Logistic
No
Find Solution from Knowledge Base
Yes
Facing Issue?
No
Managed sales/ Marketing/Logistics sucessfully
Solution Found?
Yes
Need service?
Yes
Partner Issue Resolved
No
Partner Issue Resolved
A
General Case
Added in CRM
CRM
Solution Related to Case
Case Details
Case Assigned to CRM User
CRM User
Added Probable Solution
Issue Solved?
No
Added Query
Yes
Partner Issue Resolved
How a Partner Portal Overpowers Your CRM Partner portal solutions will render 360 degree benefit in the most significant ways. From start to finish
engagements with partners, portal streamline all the activities that stands with their involvement. Some of the major benefits that it renders are:
Quick Return on Investment
Investment in the partner portal is a productive and progressive step that accelerates the business actions at your end. It streamlines the communication and reduce the labor intensive tasks immediately and helps organizations to develop focus more upon enriching the services and save time.
Productively Scalabile
While developing a partner portal, it allows you to add additional desired functionalities to it along with
the core features. It also allows you step beyond the conventional solution and scale through more features that your system really wants. Such portal development process not only makes the portal more scalable but also turns it into an all in one solution.
Focus and Precision on Business Needs
CRM applications come with default features and they are same for all enterprises. When you develop a partner portal, you can add all the features that you find necessary for your enterprise and ones that should be there. Portal allows you to focus more on your needs and plan your partner portal around these needs. It makes your portal highly usable and superiorly productive.
Loquaciously Communicative with Partners
Partner Portal gives more control to partner by establishing a productive and engaging communication
between the enterprises and partners. The portal makes all the necessary information available to partners in real time and on the go. Even when they want more details or need to submit a request, query or complaint, they can place it easily with the help of the portal
Chat Feature for Real Time Assistance
Enterprises can choose to add messaging facility while developing the Partner portal. Messaging fea-
ture betters the communication with real time assistance. It assists partners to share the latest updates,
prices, statuses and other information that can help instantly. With this, partners can also ask for support and assistance when they are stuck. The chatbots can help organizations stay available to respond 24*7.
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Adaptable to Digitization
When you are dealing with your partners through a partner portal, it makes your work
environment techno friendly. Your partners manage things in a automated process where
most of the requests, queries and other tickets are self generated by the system. Thus, your workforce adopt technology at a larger scale and be more close to an automated process.
Server and Cloud Based Solution
Partner portal is a server based solution and process all the data via server. This empower you to eliminate the need of maintaining loads of papers and big files in your computers. A server based portal make it easy to share files via portal and helps the users to work in a
dynamic enterprise structure. The portal can
also be built on cloud platform to make it more dynamic.
Secure and Safe Database
It is a big and tough task for enterprises to keep the information safe and secure of their part-
ners. Critical information like contract details,
invoices, planning documents, project status reports are importantly confidential. Storing such documents in local hard disks or in
papers makes them insecure, but when they are saved in portal database, they are completely secure and unbreachable.
ERP or CRM Independent
When organizations are using ERP or CRM as their major application, Partner Portal can
integrate with the ERP or CRM and work as a bridge that connects the enterprise with part-
ners. Partner portal can integrate with the ERP and CRM but not dependent on them. It can
also work independently without these applications.
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Extra Functionality as Per Business Needs
Partner portal can help enterprise manage their relationships with their partners, the way they want.
Businesses can add customer features that they desire and which are not available in the CRM. This
makes your portal more functional and help it to scale through more features. It also allows organizations to add features that stays applicable and compatible in their future business expansions.
Secure Process with More Control to The System Admin
Partner portal gives enterprises the legitimacy to provide a separate and dedicated platform for their partners. This way, these umpteen partners stay a part of the organization processing while staying outside the system. Another benefit this portal brings to them is the maximum control of the administrator
over the process. Allowing access of the CRM to partners makes your system insecure and burden up the admin, where portal is secure way to systemize the process.
Better Service for Partners
Partner portal works as an all in one solution when it comes to dealing with partners. Whether they want to raise a query or wish to submit a complaint or simply wish to access a product manual, Partners
portal will make it smoothest. By logging into the system, partners can help themselves and find everything on the portal. They can raise tickets, ask questions via chats and access all sorts of required documents from the portal itself.
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Engage Smarter.
Add Value to Your Partner Base Through CRMJetty Portal. CRMJetty is a business intelligence solution provider for corporates across all the industries. We specialize in CRM applications with major technologies like Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, SugarCRM, and SuiteCRM. Our next generation solutions add improvisation to your process to make it more productive, costeffective, user-friendly and customer oriented. Tour crmjetty.com to learn more.
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