Thursday, February 23, 2012

Role of Channel Management Software in Channel Partner Management

Channel partners have emerged as the business demand for suppliers. They help companies grow their business and so arrive at several geographical areas. Yet good for their business several vendors don't really appreciate the idea of having many channel partners as it makes it difficult for them to keep a track of them. As big distributors have 100s or even thousands of channel partners supporting them in their business, communicating with channel partners, keeping them well informed, having a track of their sales record and even giving them loyalty and even performance returns, is really a job in itself if done manually. However , due to expansion of technology, you'll find software like Partner Relationship Management (PRM) which will make channel management lot easy for the suppliers. Furthermore, distributors will even select to hire out some of the tricky tasks of partner training and even certification to channel management organizations.

Discussed below are some of the chores of channel partner management which can be made simple implementing software or else through help of channel management organizations.

Partner Certification
If required, sellers can choose to outsource the task of partner certification and so control of certification programs to firms. This type of organizations keep a an eye on channels partner's participation in training programs plus sales performance and even assist distributors find the perfect candidate for gains. By means of outsourcing work, businesses can save time. Plus, rewarding partners when required help to keep partners motivated and even loyal.

Partner Communications
Vendors can keep direct contact with of their channel partners all together by means of partner portals. A web based application, partner portals are the most well liked way of partner communications. It helps manufacturers to keep connected with their channel partners. Distributors can add sensitive data like price change or a change in business strategy, which could only be visible to channel partners. As partner portals ease the most hard activity of partner communications, it can make channel partner management lot easy. Moreover, efficient communication helps vendors to maintain friendly relations with their channel partners that help strengthen the business.

Partner Training
Channel partner training is an important still one of the most complicated work for any vendor. Collecting and even encouraging channel partners to learn regarding their business practices and even which makes them put into action those learning is a hard task especially when dealing with lots of channel partners. Realizing the problem of vendors, some firms have the responsibility of partner training on themselves. Suppliers can outsource the task of partner training to professional agencies for example RelayWare which have resources and even technology to take up this difficult work. Such organizations assess the knowledge baselines plus training needs of channel partners and even help to build an helpful training curriculum using audio and even video technology specific to the requirements of the channel partners. The information is then published in the partner portals so which it will become accessible to channel partners. The companies help conduct online tests and even training events to ensure transfer of knowledge to channel partners.

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