Partner Management Done Right with Dynamics 365 Partner Portal

Running a business is challenging. Running it successfully is also a little lonely. You have to keep the ship afloat and navigate it further single-handedly.

However, having a business partner can help steady the boat. Someone else can shoulder the enormity of it. Having a business with partners is not enough, though, if you are going to treat them like any other employees and give them one-directional information when it is convenient for you.

Partner management, when done right, can be the thing that not only steadies the boat but also sees any hurdles in the way and steers it around them.

Partners can be given access to concerned elements of the CRM with a Dynamics 365 partner portal. They should be able to access their leads, sales figures, customer feedback, and so on by themselves. When they have the data they need, they will not operate in the dark with only bits and pieces of information. Cohesively accessible information is more valuable to them than just simple information.

But the first question is, who do I mean when I say partners here?

• Distributors
• Resellers
• Service providers

How can each of these entities use your Dynamics 365 portal for partners?

Distributors can use the partner portal for lead management, advanced marketing, loyalty programs, and more. They can plan marketing campaigns and even execute them. With the dashboard they can keep an eye on leads coming in, orders in process, sales figures, etc.

Resellers can take advantage of the partner portal to get insights about the product, understand the lead demographic, etc. They can also run a loyalty program to get customers to sign up. In exchange they can offer discounts, priority access and more. The reseller gets some surity on repeat business.

Service providers need the partner portal as a way to manage field service tasks. Once a purchase goes through and is delivered to the customer, the partner portal enables that customer for the service provider to set up the installation and or a demo. Apart from that, if there is any issue with the product, the complaint or ticket can be directly passed on to the service provider via the partner portal.

The use cases are plenty, and a feature-rich portal like our PortalXpand can help you achieve all your partner management goals. Here’s a look at all the features you can get with it:

• Drag and drop builder: Easily drag and drop all the portal components to build an interface that streamlines your workflow.

• Configurable widgets: Fetch static data from the CRM to the portal seamlessly so your user always has updated information.

• Enhanced content management: Lock in your content components or keep them public, like FAQs, knowledgebase, and so on, with easy content management.

• Smart widgets: The dynamic data from your CRM also gets easily updated in the portal, so you always the real-time information, which helps decision-making.

• Personalized dashboard: Extend a glanceable dashboard to your partners, so they can quickly get partner distribution insights, recent activity, etc.

• 360° entity management: You can create all new entities on the portal side according to your business requirements. Apart from that, you can also use the default CRM entities to work with.
• Configure active CRM layout: Fetch multiple entities from the CRM to the portal quickly to get your partner portal set up and running.

Using a tool is only part of partner management, though. Ensuring a smooth relationship with your partners starts from the first conversation with them, then the onboarding, and lasts until after they stop working with you as well.

With our Dynamics 365 partner portal, you can rest easy that the logistics are taken care of.

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