Partner Portal - Good or Bad Strategy?
This document will discuss whether a partner portal or channel management will be a good or bad strategy for you growing business.
Business in this environment of globalization can be quite tricky. The massive scale and the big competition from the giant multinational companies as well as the new marketing niches that has come about due to the new technologies requires some of the smaller start up companies to create other plans involving partnerships and partner portal strategies. This is a computer application set up in a manufacturing company’s main website which allows its channel partners to log in and access marketing
materials and sales lists as well as report on sales activities. Actually, this strategy is no longer confined to small manufacturers and service providers who wish to branch out faster into new markets and geographical territories. There are many multinational companies who use networking through other channels. However, the special connection between small startup businesses and partnership strategies has become established especially as a way to compete with the established business competitors. Many companies swear by the implementation of portals since it purportedly provides many benefits specifically in terms of creating more revenue. There are, however, those who rebel against this popular opinion. The dissention is usually rooted in two main arguments. First of all, they claim that there is a problem regarding the lack of control of the parent company. This argument states that even though the partner portal or channel management serves as a pipeline that lets the parent company gain data regarding the channel’s sales reports and activities, this information is still insufficient. The ideal situation, supposedly, is that the manufacturing company will still be able to close a significant percentage of the sales. This is because the client’s inquiries regarding the products or services might not be answered in full by the channel partners. Only the parent company
may provide complete answers. However, an answer to this argument lies in the portal itself. The portal should be used by the parent company to disseminate technical formation on such queries among its channel partners. Also, there must be more direct knowledge fed into the parent company so that real changes in the channel programs could be made. And by “real changes,� this means the creation of programs that would bring a measurable increase in productivity both for the partner and the vendor. A second argument against implementing a partner portal is that it’s too much of a risk investment. Investing on such an application is quite taxing and the need to create an effective channel network is also very taxing. The critics of the portal strategy claim that training partners to sell a product or service is unrealistic because these companies do not have much knowledge about the product itself; with regards to its branding identity as well as intimate technical knowledge. However, a good portal coupled with good channel recruitment is the key to these problems. Getting the right channels and channel management that are motivated enough to have intimate knowledge of the product starts with the recruitment process. And a good portal and the management of it can help partners be updated with
all the technical know-how they will need to sell the product properly. Partner Portal - Good or Bad Strategy?
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