Concluding our recent series on best practice methods for the provision of web-based partner support resources:
Legal
Disclaimer / Privacy Statement / Terms and Conditions
Websites that store and collect user information are required by law (data protection act) to inform their visitors about the usage of this data. Requesting partners to accept the terms and conditions for usage of the portal could prevent issues caused by inaccuracy of provided data and/or misuse of confidential information on the portal. With this in mind, ensure that the privacy statement and the portal terms and conditions are accessible before a user has logged on to the portal and when registering for an account to access the portal the partner should be forced to accept your terms and conditions for usage.
Partner Service and Support in the Age of Social Networking
Looking forward, we see a move towards increased partner network collaboration. We believe that leading vendors should not only support but actually facilitate communication, cooperation and collaboration between the members of their partner ecosystem. Whilst many partners do compete, vendors have to some extent been complicit in dividing and conquering them. Partner portals of the future can and will play a part in bringing partners together to share strengths and compensate for weaknesses to deliver better solutions for customers. Web 2.0 will help in ensuring that, regardless or tier, label or hierarchy, all partners are given an equal opportunity to interact with the vendor and are encouraged to interact with each other for the good of the customer and of their business in general. In this way and by focusing on delivering the very highest quality of service and support to all of their partners, vendors have the opportunity to take their place at the very center of the partner ecosystem rather than merely at the top of the food chain.
Summary
Partner Portals used to be password protected websites that were often little more than repositories for out of date product information. Corporate websites have typically seen the bulk of vendor’s investment over the years and consequently many of our prospective clients complain of falling hits and a general lack of interest on the part of partners towards their portals.
Today, vendors are recognizing the importance of ensuring that their partners are as well informed as their own staff and that they are provided with tools, resources and information to an equal standard. Consequently, we have begun to see desire amongst vendors to dramatically improve not only the content of portals but also making them “self-service” sales and marketing assets for partners. In so doing they have recognized the importance indeed the necessity of deploying their partner portal not on a separate content management system but upon an integrated partner relationship management platform.
