If you want to make sure that you are working with your partners and getting the best experience then you need to try and focus on integration. If you want to find out more about that then this is the guide for you.
What’s an Integrated Partnership?
Integration partnerships often involve selling another company’s product that is able to complement or integrate with your own. This can be mutually beneficial to both parties and it opens up a world of other opportunities.
What Are the Benefits of a Strategic Partnership?
Business partnerships are nothing new to say the least. They have been around for a number of years, but over time, companies have started to see the value that they are able to add in terms of revenue and profitability. That being said, it can be very difficult to find the right people with who you can partner with. If you can break through this barrier then there are benefits to be had.
-Access to New Customers
One major goal for a lot of companies is to grow their customer base. Once you have a customer, you then need to focus on how you are going to retain them. If you partner with another company who has a similar product then you can easily gain access to more customers and this can really boost your revenue.
-Opportunity to Reach New Markets
It’s likely that any chosen partner is going to be working in a very similar field to the one you are. It’s also more than possible that their customers are going to be in a different market and sector to you. You are likely to choose customers where this is the case, so if you can expand to a new market or sector where you have a base of clients, then this is much easier than starting from scratch.
-Added Value
Accessing a new customer base is very attractive if you want your business to grow. It’s equally important if you want to retain your clients and build on their spend with you. If you associate yourself with similar products, then you can reduce the risk of unknown businesses approaching your customers and introducing organisations that would be your competition.
Let’s Talk about Integration
In this day and age, everyone is now working from home. A lot of offices are now switching to remote positions in their entirety and as a result, they are relying on things like tools or solutions so that they can keep everyone connected and customers happy. Of course, if you are using tools such as Slack to try and communicate with your partners then you should know that it is equally as important for you to integrate this into your channel. Integration can help you to build much better partnerships and it can also help you to create one-stop experiences.
Multi-Channel Integration
It doesn’t matter if your partner program has 25 partners or 2,500 because you have to make sure that you have a nice and easy way to communicate with your partners. There has been a very large increase in remote workers. Companies are now steering away from email and they are instead opting to use messaging tools so that they can get some real-time conversation going. This is also helping them to communicate and interact on a daily basis.
Business Planning Integration
Working with a lot of data can easily feel challenging. You may also feel as though it’s overwhelming. If you have a conversation with your IT team then this can easily help you to get the ball rolling on this specific part of your journey. You may think that integration means building and creating a new portal or interface for the channel you have. A lot of solution providers license their planning tools so that you can easily integrate it with the channel you have. Your IT team will draw from the dashboard with parameters that essentially pivots the data within the dashboard for your partners. You will be able to see your total portal traffic going up and you can also track your leads by using real-time data.
CRM Integration
You probably have a handful of customers who all use CRM integration with their partners. Sure, it’s IT-heavy but the benefits do in fact outweigh the work that you are doing. If you are able to apply CRM integration in your channel, then this will eliminate the swivel chair issue that a lot of people complain about. How many representatives are your partners dealing with? How many customers do they have? How many portals are they actually signed up with? How many products do they sell? It’s impossible to get them to register a deal and in some cases, if you are working with a very large partner, they won’t allow their team to access anything through another portal.