Looking To Strengthen Partner Ties, Vendors Beef Up Portal Development

Since the fall, Cisco Systems has been piloting a program with elite partners through its Partner Access onLine (PAL) Web site to monitor solution provider satisfaction and share that information with partners. Under the initiative, partners can provide Cisco channel account managers with specific feedback and ratings related to seven different areas, ranging from training and development to pre- and post-sales support.

In addition, the updated PAL site provides Cisco channel account managers with a detailed view of partner specializations and certification history, as well as information about any customer audits or unresolved problems and issues with the vendor. Channel account managers also can evaluate how a particular partner rates compared with its peers.

The partner portal is being adapted to sharpen automation of certain areas in the vendor-partner relationship, with the ultimate goal of providing an end-to-end view of information across the entire Cisco supply chain, said Kevin MacRitchie, vice president of worldwide channels operations at Cisco.

"For so many [vendors, our systems in the past have been focused on supporting just the enterprise-focused reseller partner," MacRitchie said, adding that the long-term goal should be to help ensure loyalty. "If we leave a hole, someone [else can step in."

Microsoft also is evolving its solution provider portal, dubbed Microsoft For Partners, to provide channel partners with product and program information for business planning, according to Allison Watson, vice president of worldwide partner sales and marketing at the software vendor.

The Microsoft For Partners site was redesigned in July based on feedback from solution providers about where they wanted to find certain information. The site also includes updated materials for marketing campaigns. As of last month, the redesigned portal had drawn roughly 450,000 visitors, Watson said.

"I now feel like I'm the CIO of my division within Microsoft," Watson said. "It happens to be an area where we have some important breakthroughs to make," she added.

In the short term, Microsoft's channel management team is revising the company's e-learning strategy, but a longer-term goal is to provide field-sales staff with a consolidated view of all partner information, enabling them to look downstream into distribution for inventory data and upstream through partners for customer information, Watson said. Currently, the sales team must access several different sources for such data, and partners would have to do the same to get a similar view of Microsoft, she said.

"Over time, enabling our partners to be the most successful requires us to provide them with a view of their total activity with us. That's where our thinking is," Watson said. "Our vision is that we would have a 360-degree view of the partner and to the partner. That's a vision statement."

Hewlett-Packard also is working on changes to its partner portal, said Neville Hill, director of partner relationship management (PRM) at the vendor. HP's partner portal development team is examining ways to help solution providers consolidate their views into supply chain information, among other issues, he said.

"It's somewhat arrogant to expect that our partners should come to our portal for information and then go elsewhere as well," Hill said.

To that end, HP is working to link supply chain information and configuration tools offered by distributors into a partner's portal view. For example, a solution provider that places an order with Arrow Electronics North American Computer Products or Avnet Computer Marketing may need to access inventory and delivery information via the distributor's Web site and then visit the HP partner portal for additional information.

"The audiences continue to be separate today," Hill said.

However, like many other vendors, HP envisions a future in which these information environments would have seamless access to each other, according to Hill. That would allow solution providers to check inventory, manage leads, report customer satisfaction, profile new prospects and analyze sales trends in one place, he said.

"In many ways, I think the portal is a new paradigm for rich information," Hill said.