Onboarding is one of the most cardinal steps of the channel partner relationship. This primary phase is all about connecting to customers and making first impressions. A scattered system compels businesses to onboard partners slowly (sometimes even in months) and ultimately devalues and dismantles partner relationships even before it begins.
Organizations that still hobble along manual onboarding processes tend to suffer from numerous pitfalls such as partner disengagement, reduced partner performance, dissatisfied business customers, and lost time, money, and effort invested in recruiting the partner.
A self-service-powered approach to trading partner onboarding and management can help companies create robust relationships with their trading partners. It enables all business users to create onboarding connections by pointing and clicking through easy screens and dashboards. At the same time, IT is freed to focus on governance and more high-value tasks.
By taking a self-service integration approach, companies can onboard partner data faster by 80 per cent, in minutes instead of months. That not only helps companies make a powerful first impression on their customers but also deliver the value promised to them.
A self-service integration approach to partner onboarding enables business users to speed up onboarding by 80 per cent, deliver delightful experiences, and accelerate revenue.
Why is Legacy Approach to Partner Onboarding Slow and Cumbersome?
According to Ovum, a well-renowned research firm found that about 40% of companies consume a month of calendar time to onboard a new trading partner.
Due to the proliferation of the number of partners, onboarding has become even more difficult. A plethora of companies bank on manual methods and B2B/EDI connections to facilitate a growing partner ecosystem. IT integrators create long hours of coding to create onboarding connections. But, since manual coding is required, it introduces massive errors and delays, resulting in inefficient, redundant processes. When a change has to be made in the complex network, IT teams must invest weeks or months of execution time – resulting in onboarding backlogs, poor visibility into trading partner relationships, and costly errors.
Companies with ineffective onboarding methods need to address the situation immediately – their data integration capabilities need to be reimagined.
Transform Partner Onboarding Through Self-Service
Companies can transform partner onboarding using a self-service integration approach. It enables non-technical business users to onboard partner data in minutes instead of months. Here are a few functionalities of a self-service integration platform that plays a vital role in transforming partner relationships, accelerating partner ramp times, building new revenue streams.
Pre-Built Templates: This functionality enables non-technical business users to create business data connections with their partners without seeking IT support. Pre-built templates help businesses reduce onboarding time by 80 per cent and trade with new partners faster, improving cash flow and growing revenue. Further, it allows companies to go after new markets and customers more aggressively by becoming easier to do business with.
Pre-built templates enable companies to reuse their partner profiles and automate data migration. To add, since this capability supports different types of data formats, structured and unstructured, organizations can create as well as customize myriad integration projects, empowering them to build complex transformation initiatives in a short time.
Pre-Built Application Connectors: With application connectors such as Salesforce, SharePoint, HubSpot, Shopify, Big Commerce, and more, business users can create data connections and share data directly with these applications. These pre-built connectors support all advanced protocols, including FTP, SFTP, AS2, JMS and more, to assist a trading partner. Ergo, the need for organizations to leverage a solution to support different protocols is no longer necessary.
Customized Dashboards: Managing partner relationships requires transparency throughout the onboarding process. Intuitive dashboards deliver real-time information that empowers everyone in the organization to identify revenue-driving business relationships. They enable businesses to view the exchanged information along with historical logs in real-time. Hence, if a company wishes to verify partner data exchanged earlier, it can do so without problems or errors.
AI and ML – Powered Data Mapping: AI-enabled data mapping solutions enable business users to map the onboarded partner data with ease and precision. It uses machine learning algorithms to create intelligent mappings. By using AI-enabled solutions to map and integrate partner data faster, companies can deliver delightful customer experiences and ultimately grow revenue.
To conclude, enterprises that wish to create new revenue streams and kickstart growth need to opt for a self-service integration platform to simplify their onboarding processes and create a colossal partner ecosystem.
