Partners just like competitors are a special type of account. They play a specific role in the sales process as distributor, reseller or just as supporting 3rd party. Defining a partner is therefore not much different from defining an account.
Most of the additional attributes that can be captures for partners are around classification. The screenshot below shows classification fields like:
- Tier
- Status
- Geography
- Focus Area
- Certifications
Geographies and Focus Areas are not just picked from a picklist, but chosen from a more user friendly hierarchical picker.
Partner Hierarchies
Partners can be linked up in hierarchies just like ordinary accounts.
This allows for some very interesting reporting!
Partner Contacts
And as you might expect, just like how you can define contacts for accounts, they can also be created for partners. An interesting twist to partner contacts is that they can represent partner employees that need access to Oracle Sales Cloud. Sales Cloud users need to be created for them. Notice the ‘Manage User Details’ option for each in the screenshot below.
A partner administrator can create contacts themselves and assign them the user status or request this through the Channel Manager.
So we defined a partner
Once a partner have been created, the expected types of information like a team, activities and notes can be logged against them just as for other accounts.
But then the actual work begins. In the following posts in this series, I will discuss how a partner can enroll in partner programs and how joint business plans can be agreed upon.
Once the cooperation between the sales channel organization and their partners has been defined:
- leads can be shared by the channel organization
- partners can create leads and opportunities
- deals can be registered by partners in order to earn exclusivity or some extra discount
- partners can request marketing funds
- …
This leaves plenty of PRM aspects to discuss in the rest of this series.
