The most basic form of Partner Locator is the Store Locator that you see on retail websites. Store Locators are driven by customer location and not much more. B2B Partner Locators need to take partner skills and experience into account, to match customers with the right provider. And Marketplaces go a step further by creating a sophisticated resource to showcase application and service providers.
SECOND GENERATION PARTNER LOCATORS
Early partner locators allowed a customer to select a business based only on geography. And even that was problematic. The best provider of a technology solution may not be the business closest to the customer. So second generation partner locators included selection criteria based on customer need. Usually they offered the customer a selection of partner specialisations built on the vendor’s solution portfolio.
Many Partner Locators today are still ‘second generation’ and offer these three basic selections:
• Customer Location: which could be country, region, city, postcode, etc.
• Partner Specialisation: usually based on the vendor’s solution portfolio.
• Partner Type and/or Level In Program: to give focus to committed partners.
Second generation Partner Locators were often run from stand-alone partner databases, as it was too challenging to link the locator tool to the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) system, or no PRM system existed.
NEXT GENERATION PARTNER LOCATORS
As Partner Locators have evolved from second generation, we see three areas of change.
Firstly we see locator tools allow the customer to self-profile. This allows the tool to narrow down the partner selection. The Partner Locator might ask for customer business size, usually based on employee count, and vertical industry. Take a look at the Cisco Partner Locator for an example of this.
Second, we see algorithms coming into play in the back end of the locator tool. The locator balances the selection criteria - location, partner skills, customer profile - and prioritises partners based on overall best fit, often using a scoring system. The user sees a list with best-fit partners first.
The third change is that locator tools have been integrated with the vendor’s PRM, so that partner profile data held on the PRM drives the selection presented on the locator.
Many partner locators look ‘next generation’ but in fact are not. Although they collect partner skills and customer profile information, they present back partners based only on customer location. This is often because partner profile information held in the PRM system is not reliable enough to drive sophisticated locator algorithms.
APPLICATION AND SERVICE MARKETPLACES
The Apple App Store was opened on July 10, 2008, with five hundred applications available. It now features well over two million apps. In many ways the Apple App Store is the model for all Marketplaces. It’s still very much a ‘locator’ platform, with the ‘next generation’ features explained above. However the Apple App Store, and the Marketplace concept in general, has moved on in the following areas:
• Customer Driven. Marketplaces usually allow customers to rate solutions, and in some cases to add reviews. The ratings are built into the selection algorithms when searches are undertaken.
• eCommerce. Because Marketplaces are for software applications and services, it’s a natural next step to allow the customer to buy and download an app direct from the ‘locator’.
• Sophisticated Search. Marketplaces use Google-like search technology to present results. In some cases they allow listings to be promoted in the form of paid-for marketing campaigns.
The term ‘Marketplace’ is somewhat abused. It’s easy to find so-called Marketplaces that are actually second-generation partner locators. They don’t offer the features listed above.
Salesforce AppExchange is perhaps the best example of a B2B Marketplace. It offers all the features mentioned above, including paid-for promotions.
BEST PRACTICE WITH LOCATORS
It’s surprising how many technology vendors are still with second-generation Partner Locators. It’s also surprising how many vendor locators are suffering from partner profile data issues, often associated with the vendor PRM. Try this.
Find a vendor locator, fill in your location and a partner specialisation. Look at the list. Now change the specialisation and you get the same list. That’s caused by bad data. Try it with your own Partner Locator.
The features associated with ‘next generation’ Partner Locators, like partner scoring, and display of partners based on best fit, are best practice. If your locator tool is still primarily driven by location then it’s out of date.
NEXT STEPS
Kovendi has deep expertise with partner profile data and with partner locators. We benchmark locators and we're experienced working with PRM systems to manage partner profile data. Get in contact to know more.