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Partner-Facing Applications(PFA)

Despite the unbridled enthusiasm for the Net as a channel for direct selling to customers that besets many companies, the fact remains that most selling activity still takes place through partners.   Even in the high-tech industry, often held out as the exemplar for direct commerce, with companies like Dell, Cisco, IBM, and Intel leading the pack, partners still accounts for over 50 percent of sales.  In fact, the importance of partners in the selling process is increasing, not decreasing, as firms trim their direct sales forces and seek to leverage the assets and relationships of partners.  The growing importance of partners has given rise to a new class of partner-facing enterprise applications.  A host of new vendors have emerged to offer software and services for partner relationship management.  In addition, traditional enterprise software vendors like Siebel, Oracle, and PeopleSoft are rapidly extending their applications to include partner-facing functionality.

What do they do?

Partner-facing applications, streamline interactions between enterprises and their channel partners and improve the financial return from partner relationships.  These applications encompass three primary areas of functionality: resource allocation tools, opportunity management tools, and sales productivity tools. Resource allocation includes functions like partners profiling, channel funds allocation, and return on investment (ROI) monitoring from partner programs.  Opportunity management involves sourcing and managing  customer leads for partners, and tracking the performance of partner in converting leads to sales.  Sales productivity tools help the enterprise to distribute product information, product updates, marketing collateral, and support and training materials - all with the express purpose of assisting partners in demonstrating, selling, and supporting the companies offerings.        

The difference between partner-facing and customer-facing 

Partner-facing applications overlap significantly with customer-facing applications, as both seek to improve the companies go-to-market strategy in terms of performance and profitability.  The key difference lies in the fact that customer-facing applications traditionally have assumed a direct connections between the enterprise and the customer, either through telemarketing or Web-based sales channels, or through a direct sales force.  In contrast, partner-facing applications focus on automating and optimizing indirect channels of distribution that involve one or more layers of partners between the enterprise and its customers.  Unlike the sales force, partners do not work for the company and are not bound by the companies standards for technology.  Consequently,  partners-facing applications need to be far more flexible than the client/server technologies that have traditionally served as the foundation for sales force automation software.  Furthermore, partners generally do not generate demand by themselves, so the company has to take a proactive stance in generating leads and managing follow-up.

Additional benefits

Partner-facing applications bring accountability to channel partner performance by allowing the firm to track the status of every lead.  The performance of partners can be monitored accurately and in real time.  In addition, these applications extend the benefits of SFA, (Sales Force Applications) CRM, (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Relationship Management) applications to channel partners.  Partners facing applications also improve the quality and speed of communications with resellers, by creating a platform for information dissemination, training, competitive monitoring, and updates on new products.  Cost savings can be significantly reduced by replacing the reams of paper-based marketing and support materials flowing from the company to it's partners.The foundation of every partner-facing application is the system that stores partner profiles. The system is the analogue of the customer relationship repository that lies at the heart of customer-facing applications.  The partner profile is a complete view of every partner relationship, including contact and companyographic information, commission structures, and the partner's performance history.  The partner profile centralizes and standardizes information across the companies entire base of partners, thereby allowing the company to segment its partner relationships and to target its communications and leads more accurately.

The partner-facing system includes the following key elements.

Adaptive lead management

This functionality allows enterprises to distribute leads to the appropriate partners and to monitor the results of leads generated from various sources.  The adaptive aspect of the lead management system means that partner performance and lead productivity can be used to fine-tune the lead generation, distribution, and follow-up process.  An effective lead management system should improve the close rate by better qualifying, routing, and following up leads as they work their way through the sales cycle.

Content management

This functionality allows companies to distribute content such as  product information, product updates, support literature, and competitive information to partners quickly and cost-effectively.  Content management should include personalization capability, so partners receive content customized to their context.  Content can also include training materials that can assist partner sales and support personnel to be trained on new offerings using an assisted or self-guided learning model.  Content management allows partners to improve their sales productivity and to get up-to-speed faster with new products and product updates.

Promotion management

This functionality seeks to optimize the effectiveness of ROI of partner-facing  promotional programs.  It includes a resource allocation capability that determines how the company allocates marketing funds to its partners, and a monitoring capability to evaluate the results of each promotional activity and each partner.  Promotion management improves the productivity of co-operative marketing spending and helps improve the accountability of partners as they execute promotional campaigns.

Order/quote configuration

This functionality allows partners to respond to customer inquires for quotes, and to configure products and services to the requirements of customers.  Configuration capabilities are particularly important for assembled and modular products that can be configured in a myriad of ways and priced and bundled in many different permutations.  Configurators also check for logical inconsistencies in the configuration and eliminate those that are not feasible or available.  As a result, error rates can drop, and the companies offerings can be more accurately  customized to partner and end-customer needs.

Consultative selling

Interactive selling tools allow partners to demonstrate the companies products and services to end-customers by combining content and configuration capabilities with an intuitive user interface that presents the companies offerings in an appealing manner.  These tools are similar to the interactive selling tools found in sales force automation software.

E-commerce storefronts

A companies partners will often want their own e-commerce presence to sell directly to their customers.  It is in the interest of the company to ensure that the partners adopt a common technology platform and consistent user interface to present to end-customers.  And it is in the interest of the company to provide this infrastructure to its partners, so that the partners' retail presence is tightly integrated with the companies e-commerce platform and ERP system.  Therefore, partner facing applications often include ways for partners to create their own retail storefronts, using a common back-end infrastructure and a consistent front-end look and feel.   A shared platform distributes the infrastructure costs over a large base of partners.  It also promotes the integrity of the companies brand by ensuring that end-customers have a consistent experience, regardless of the partner with whom they choose to do business.  The company can also provide shared value-added services to its partners, including financing, logistics, and customer support.

Forecasting and planning

Planning functionality allows partners to formulate demand forecasts and sales plans based on information about end-customer demand, as well as the companies own capacity and production plans.  These tools permit partners to collaboratively plan and forecast, and they allow the company to generate demand forecasts for sales through the partner channels.

In Summary

In summary, partner-facing applications permit enterprises to transform their overall approach to partner management, shifting from processes that are ad hoc and tactical to ones that are strategic and rely on real-time data to improve the planning, analysis, execution, and optimization of partner-focused programs.  The company and its partners can set joint goal, making joint plans, and implement joint marketing strategies.  Partner-facing applications will continue to gain momentum as companies increase their reliance on partners to leverage their assets and broaden their reach.