Partner Portals

Many of our clients increasingly look to their partners to increase revenues or provide economies of scale through their partner channels. Partners often provide insight into emerging markets that our clients don't always have easy access to or provide customer relationships that would not have been easily or efficiently obtained before. The opportunity to leverage partnerships into long-term relationships that consistently feed the bottom line has become more compelling than ever.

Our clients who recognize the value of these relationships also understand that healthy partner relationships always require investment in process. Many of our clients have invested heavily in developing partner programs that require people, skills and processes (in the form of standard operating procedures) that make those relationships profitable. In order to magnify the effectiveness of these programs, our clients are increasingly putting these processes online in the form of portals.

Designing and developing an effective partner portal is no less critical or complex than developing a customer or sales portal. There are typically a variety of complicated partner designations and categories that define the partner criteria and partner profile. There are usually complex relationships that define the working relationships and operational models of the partnership. Included in these relationships are metrics or analytics that define the success of the relationships and partnerships. All of these considerations span the operational organizations inside a company. From marketing, sales, finance and legal to supply chain, manufacturing, distribution and procurement, all companies require a portal that offers robust features and represents insight to their company's logistics and operations.

Partner portals can be described as the most efficient way to:

• View information from the supplier/buyer on operating procedures
• Retrieve information on demand for the supply (or vice versa)
• Process orders
• Share market intelligence
• Collaborate with sales, supply chain or procurement
• View information on the success metrics of the relationship
• Obtain information on the financial relationship between the partners.

The crux of an effective partner portal is that it represents all aspects of the relationship. Our clients recognize that an effective partner portal is one that effectively embeds process, knowledge, forms of collaboration and has dashboards that are meaningful to the relationship. An effective partner portal combines all of these portal elements with a level of personalization that makes it most meaningful to the partner.

The hallmark of the most effective partner portal is a design that represents the most complex relationships in a ubiquitous user experience that makes it dramatically effective. Providing unique content within the context of the type of partner is critical to the success of the portal. An effective partner portal eliminates redundancy and enhances communication, reduces infrastructure necessary to support the relationship, and supports conformity to the process. They reduce the cost necessary to maintain relationships, enhance the partnerships over the long-term, and capitalize on the objectives of the partnership with lower long-term investment.

Learn more about LDS' enterprise management or customer management solutions.