Dell Portal Protects Partner Data

The Wall, our name for the Dell partner portal, which was developed by Dell with the assistance of Salesforce.com, went live with the Round Rock, Texas-based company's formal channel program launch last week. CRN Test Center engineers looked at a sandbox copy of Dell's Deal Registration partner portal. We also examined the internals of the Partner Deal Evaluation system.

Why is this critical? Because this is where partners will submit deals to Dell for registration and where those deals—with sensitive customer data—will enter a workflow involving Dell executives that will lead to approval or rejection. Based on the two evaluations, we concluded that the portal implementation and Dell's back-end deal evaluation system follow sound guidelines in the way they separate user access and data. We're giving it our thumbs- up for good design and thorough data oversight.

Deal Registration Partner Portal
As far as usability goes, the portal is right on the money. The site is as intuitive as navigating through Amazon.com, so no partner training is required. From the main page, partners can view opportunities, register new deals, check their performance profiles and track the approval process, as well as send e-mails to approval managers at Dell. The portal has many customizable views that partners can use to quickly sort and find information on active deals. Partners also can create any list views they want. According to Dell, registered resellers will only be able to see their own information. Only after a deal is submitted does it go to a dedicated Dell partner group. The application is developed to keep solution provider data before Dell channel executives only and away from the eyes of anyone in Dell's direct-sales organization. The Partner Relationship Management application works to keep customer information—name, what products they want to buy, how much they want to spend, contact information—in front of only them as well.

Though impossible to prove whether the partner data is truly separated from a human standpoint, the Salesforce.com PRM application does a sound, technical job at hiding data at the field level.

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Dell chose to use field level security on all relevant customer and partner data, and added a red bar on required field groups so that partners can see what's required by Dell's channel sales group. However, nowhere in a deal record did engineers see that the information will not be shared. A small note on the main page states that end-user information will not be shared with Dell's direct-sales team. The fact that the note is in small print and is not shown on each record before submission will make some partners nervous. Dell's Partner Deal Evaluation System
From an approver's perspective, Dell's indirect sales workflow is fully integrated with the Deal Registration portal. Changes made to a record by Dell channel sales approvers are immediately seen by partners. Dell made it clear to engineers that the data is secured based on field level access and every transaction is recorded. Every change receives a date and time stamp. Approvers can produce full audit trails, so solution providers can see at every step who is looking over their information.

Upon opening a deal record, engineers found that the account name was blanked out because we didn't have manager credentials. This is a good example of having field level security on the same record. It simplifies the workflow process and ensures that only approvers with the right credentials can view the entire record.

Dell's partner system uses time-based workflows for the deal approval process. After registering a deal, Dell has a set of rules for handling the partner information within a period of time. The rules vary on product, location, deal size, and the like. Partners also can receive other informational messages throughout the process. Engineers found that the process creates transparency between partners and the Dell channel sales team, while locking out Dell's direct-sales team.

As long as Dell maintains the decision-making process transparent in the system, partners shouldn't see their deals go awry. From a pure technical perspective, engineers could not identify any flaws that could present a problem to partners.