Partner Portal Whitepaper - CRMJetty

1. Partnering Convenience Channeling Better Partnerships Through Partner Portal Vision Document

3. Contents Relationship Augmentation with Your Channel Partners Through Partner Portal 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 8 8 Connect with Partners and Manage Them in a Digitized System Dedicated Platform with Secure and Automated Environment Challenges that a Partner Portal Meets Group and Role Management Partner Performance Management Asset Management Program Management Dynamic Content Management Marketing and Sales Forecasting Business Analytics Use Case 9 10 10 11 11 11 11 11 11 12 12 Client Natural Practice Core Requirements Information Sharing Interaction and Communication Point Invoice Processing Case Generation Quotation Processing Managing Orders Partner Document Sharing 12 12 13 14 15 16 Solutions That a Partner Portal Modules Renders Solution in 4 Categories 1. Sales 2. Marketing 3. Logistics 4. Support Vision Document Partner Portal 3

4. Essential Elements and Key Requirements of Partner Portal 17 17 17 17 18 18 18 19 Personalized Access Onboarding Automation Programs Library and Management Training & Certification Business / Functional Planning and Contract Management Incentives Management Community How a Partner Portal Overpowers Your CRM 21 21 21 21 21 21 Quick Return on Investment Productively Scalabile Focus and Precision on Business Needs Loquaciously Communicative with Partners Chat Feature for Real Time Assistance 22 22 22 22 Adaptable to Digitization Server and Cloud Based Solution Secure and Safe Database ERP or CRM Independent 23 Extra Functionality as Per Business Needs 23 Secure Process with More Control to The System Admin 23 24 Better Service for Partners Contact Us Vision Document Partner Portal 4

5. Relationship Augmentation with Your Channel Partners Through Partner Portal Connect with Partners and Manage Them in a Digitized System With the growth of an organization; along with the number of participants, the involvement of the partners also increases. So, it becomes a tough affair for organizations to manage all their partners via emails, phone calls or one on one interactions. CRM software can manage all part- ner interactions seamlessly but it lacks the com- munication point between the organizations and partners. But due to the additional licensing cost, organiza- tion opt out to give access to partners. Also, the inclusion of all the partners makes you system overloaded and messed up, which increases the security and safety concerns for other crucial data. Here, building a partner portal that can integrate with the existing applications of the enterprise and can work as a dedicated solution to take pro- ductive as well progressive care of the partners. The Partner portal digitizes the partner activities and automates the way organizations deals with them. Access of all the data and record of all the activities are also administered under a safe and secure system. It creates a demand of a medium through which partners can connect and communicate with the organization officials. Hence, the best suitable solution here is an application that is completely 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. Vision Document Partner Portal 5

6. Challenges that a Partner Portal Meets Group and Role Management This is closely in connection with the personalized and localized access that we referred to in the previous section. For the success of your engage- ment with partners through a portal, you have to set up multiple roles and multiple groups by part- ner tier, partner classification, partner business model, capabilities, etc. in order to customize what individual partners are able to access when they log in. Asset Management Think about the variety of assets used to train partners: product sheets, pricing sheets, program information; web content and downloadable content in the form of e-books, case studies, fliers, videos or podcasts. These are assets you are con- stantly uploading to your portal. You must have a dynamic asset management system in place that automates this process and streamlines your workflow significantly. Your partner portal has to be able to do that. If you are a several-million-dollar company, chances are you have a significant volume of information that is not relevant for every partner who accesses the partner portal. When you upload programs, incentive, training—all of the content your partners are accessing—it’s abso- lutely 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. Program Management If you’re a marketing person, whether you’re man- aging channel marketing or channel sales, you’re constantly running various types of marketing programs, sales programs and training pro- grams. Again, you have to be able to manage that process through a seamless interface. 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 pro- grams they are attending, how many technical people they have, how many marketing pro- grams they have run, what sales campaigns and/or initiatives they have pursued. You should be able to look at all of these elements, figure out what has worked consistently, and then create a performance plan that’s realistic. 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 variet- ies 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. Vision Document Partner Portal 6

7. 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.

8. Business Analytics This is certainly one of the most important capa- bilities 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 per- forming less well than they should. 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 cer- tainty, you need to know what programs and initiatives have been successful. Without a truly unified platform, it is almost impossible to do that. Business analytics can give you invaluable insights that allow you to intelligently reduce costs—not only by eliminating programs and streamlining the portions of the channel that aren’t producing, but also by focusing on high- er-impact ROI programs that will drive your growth forward. Your partner portal has to be able to do that. Vision Document Partner Portal 8

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10. 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 chan- nels. All these partners are dealing into various levels and with different degree of involvement. The organi- zation is also having a need to manage their sales, lo- gistic 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. Partner Portal Vision Document 10

11. 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, com- plaints, 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, Part- ners 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 pro- cessing these quotes via emails make thing messed and sometimes confusing. Portal is a well defined system to manage quotes in an organized manner. Partner Portal Vision Document 11

12. 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 part- ners 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. 2. Marketing 3. Logistics 4. Support 1. Sales Vision Document Partner Portal 12

13. 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 strate- gize 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 docu- ments 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. Vision Document Partner Portal 13

14. 14 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 market- ing 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 mar- keting 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 perfor- mances. •Marketing Event Invitation and Overview Whenever the enterprises organize an event or a marketing pro- gram, they do not have to send individual invitation for the follow- ing to all the partners. Partner portal will be sending all these infor- mation 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.

15. 15 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 organiza- tions 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 direct- ly 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

16. 4. Support The core benefit of having a partner portal revolves around having a platform that connects the part- ners 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 part- ner 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. Vision Document Partner Portal 16

17. Essential Elements and Key Requirements of Partner Portal Personalized Access When an employee from the sales team logs into the portal, all the features of portal avail- able to that individual must be related to sales. When you can automate these steps, providing automated checklists that take partners sequentially through each critical functional area (marketing, sales, financial planning, tech- nology, etc.)— and when these processes are customized according to a partner’s role—the process becomes highly efficient and, most importantly, it keeps partners informed about what they need to do next. Here’s an opportuni- ty to significantly scale your engagement model global by various functions and roles. There is no point for that person to be reading about technical issues or marketing programs and plans when that individual is not responsible for those aspects of the business. Similarly, if a technical person logs in and is fully focused on technical content or content related to products and solutions, there is no point for that individual to have access to content related to sales incen- tives 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. 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 exam- ple, 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. 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 thousands of partners and are constantly launching new products and bringing new part- ners into the program that you frequently have to stair-step on 30- or 90-day cycles on various aspects of your programs. Vision Document Partner Portal 17

18. Training & Certification When you launch a set of solutions that require some level of training, whether you are in insur- ance or real estate or franchises or technology; your channel partners need to be properly trained. You may have a simple training & certifi- cation program, you may not have any formal program at all, or you may have a very complex program with multiple certification tracks. Today, most of those engagements still happen through email, and it’s extremely difficult to keep track of them, especially when a set of partners transfers over from one channel man- ager to another. It’s almost impossible for the new channel manager to get up to speed, and in many cases the manager actually loses that engagement. Again, providing a unified experi- ence through the partner portal is essential to address 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 training, create a learning path and a certifica- tion path that will take them through the pro- grams step-by-step and get educated—either online using a learning management system or offline by attending your events and training ses- sions. Incentives Management Based on their performance, partners should always know what additional rewards, rebates and market development funds they can access. If this information is not revealed in a logical way and partners have to spend a lot of time figuring out where the incentives are, they will disengage. The outcome? Over half of incentive dollars in partner programs today are simply not utilized. That’s because partners struggle to find which programs relevant to their activities are being funded, how to apply for the funds and how to claim them when they meet the performance requirements. The whole learning experience requires to be completely unified, from attending training sessions to clearing the certification sessions partners should be able to access, manage and add their inputs in a seamless way. Business / Functional Planning and Contract Management 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. There must be a unified experience in the incen- 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 cer- tification 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. Vision Document Partner Portal 18

19. 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 knowl- edge about your products and solutions, how to position against the competition, about emerg- ing 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, cur- rent 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. Vision Document Partner Portal 19

20. A Website CRM User Contact Module Customers Authenticate User Authenticate User Portal SignUp Verified User Portal Login Manage Marketing Manage Services/ Customers Manage Sales Manage Logistic No Find Solution from Knowledge Base Yes Yes Need service? Facing Issue? No Managed sales/ Marketing/Logistics sucessfully Partner Issue Resolved Yes Solution Found? No Partner Issue Resolved A General Case Added in CRM Case Details CRM Solution Related to Case Case Assigned to CRM User Partner Issue Resolved Added Probable Solution Yes Issue Solved? CRM User No Added Query

21. 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 immediate- ly 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 fea- tures 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 part- ners 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 sup- port and assistance when they are stuck. The chatbots can help organizations stay available to respond 24*7. Vision Document Partner Portal 21

22. 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 com- pletely 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 appli- cations. Vision Document 22 Partner Portal

23. 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 organiza- tions 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 out- side 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 every- thing on the portal. They can raise tickets, ask questions via chats and access all sorts of required docu- ments from the portal itself. Vision Document Partner Portal 23

24. Add Value to Your Partner Base Through CRMJetty Portal. Engage Smarter. CRMJetty is a business intelligence solution provider for corporates across all the indus- tries. 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, cost- effective, user-friendly and customer oriented. Tour crmjetty.com to learn more. For more information, connect with us at: Phone: US : +1 (408) 329-9693 UK : +44 20 3893 2693 India : +91-91067 47559 Email: sales@crmjetty.com Copyrights. All Rights Reserved CRMJetty.