All About Partner Programs Basically, partner program can be called by many different names like channel program or alliance program; a type of business strategy used by numerous vendors to be able to encourage Value Added Resellers or VAR, Managed Service Providers or MSPs, Consultant, System Integrators or SI, Original Equipment Manufacturers or OEM, Independent Software Vendors or ISV and distributors to recommend or to sell the vendor’s associated services and products. Partner programs can be segmented as well to accommodate specific needs of a certain kind of channel company. To give you a quick example, the VAR outreach effort of the vendor for instance may focus on offering volume based product discounts and even market development funds. VARs make it possible for the resellers to accrue dollars to be able to invest in demand, generating activities based on percentage of product sales. Consultants on the other hand may recommend products but might not resell them. As for those partners, vendors may be offering a consultant liaison program which can provide easy access to the technical documentation, dedicated support and product training. Meanwhile, the MSP aspect of the partner program can offer products that are specifically geared towards the service providers. A vendor is selling to the MSP and through the MSP as well in most cases. A vendor of management and remote monitoring tools for instance will directly sell to the MSP which in turn, installs the software program to provide services to end users.
The Essential Laws of Resources Explained
As a matter of fact, majority of IT or Information Technology vendors have partner programs to among the leading and most established IT firms in the industry. Many of the smaller vendors on the other hand are also operating such programs since the channel partners give them with better foothold on the ground. Access to the vendor technical support, sales and product training, lead generation tools as well as access to the beta versions of the vendor products are a few of the typical features of a partner program. Some other program incentives can include industry and awards recognition at vendor events and even rewards to the channel partner sales staff.
The Key Elements of Great Programs
The channel partners might see these programs in their favor yet, find that some elements are frustrating occasionally. A quick example of this is deal registration; this is a common part of different partner programs and may be a real challenge for channel partners to implement. Deal registration is helping partners to safeguard their investment in sales opportunities but the system that is managing deal registration might offer only limited visibility into the deal status. However, vendors can deploy a Partner Relationship Management or PRM system, which is a channel oriented take on the customer relationship management to be able to improve their interactions with the channel companies.
