Thursday, July 15, 2010

Saved by the Partner Portal

My friend and I were talking about how channel cooperation worked for us. And as the discussion went on, I noticed that most of our collaborations were only possible because the company we worked for had a partner portal. Somehow having partner portal allows us to do our job in a harmonious and strategic way as compared to how we did our work before.

I remember having trouble over the same prospects and arguing about who would take the target and who would find another prey although basically we were from the same company. When I was still a direct seller for our company, my friend who was somehow part of the managing team of the indirect selling force usually reported to me on our free time that we had the same target. Meaning to say, there was a channel conflict occurring outside of the original arrangement. This also meant that the boss had to change the channel management solution service he just ordered. He was quite furious, more or less.

http://cheapoair.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/business_travel.jpg
channel partner strategy

Still, with the company growing by the end of last year’s third quadrant, all of a sudden the company had three additional partners. It was good news the company was growing and having more partners but I would have really like the company to be smaller than it is now. Why? This only means one thing to me: bigger competition with the same tactical performance.

While the number of people who I had to share my work with grew, meaning an easier sell sometimes but not all the time, the number of people who I had to avoid bumping into also grew. Needless to say, we were not managed carefully and precisely. I had several troubles of the same kind I mentioned before until the management thought that if they also shared their processes of management with their partner, perhaps selling different products in the same location would not have been a bother.

In the end, creating a portal which shared management and allocation data and not only sales information proved to be more than effective for our company and its partners. I should really be more appreciative of what technology brings.

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