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b'At ZINFI, we work for major global brands and every day help thousands of their channel partners improve productivity. This is not as straightforward as it might be. One of the main complaints we hear constantly from channel partners is how hard it is to use most vendors\\u2019 partner portals. Yes, a few are great, but most\\xa0partner portals\\xa0are complex to understand. When we ask partners what they would like to see in an ideal\\xa0partner portal, the five things\\xa0we consistently hear are not surprising, but somehow only rarely delivered:\\n\\n \\tEase of navigation\\xa0- Far too frequently, vendors use cool marketing lingo that is utterly confusing. Why use non-specific terms like \\u201cengage\\u201d or \\u201cexcite\\u201d about your channel process steps when you can use simple, unmistakable words like \\u201cwelcome\\u201d, \\u201cjoin\\u201d, \\u201con-board\\u201d or \\u201ctrain\\u201d. Calling a spade a spade is the first step in simplifying navigation in your\\xa0partner portal. Also, categorizing your\\xa0partner portal by straightforward functional areas like sales, marketing, technical or incentives is logical and doesn\\u2019t require an effort to understand. Being too cool isn\\u2019t clever. Ease of navigation starts with making things easy to grasp.\\n \\tMobile access- More than two-thirds of the partners consistently access a\\xa0partner portal\\xa0while they are away from their desk. So, while it is easy to make your portal mobile-compatible, don\\u2019t forget to make the rest of your portal smartphone- or tablet- You don\\u2019t have to go all the way in building apps for your portal. Many vendors have gone far down the app route, and it has turned out to be a pretty wasted investment, as very few partners click through all the apps. So, while apps can work as a Band-Aid to push out some news streams, events, training, etc., don\\u2019t get bogged down: focusing on the broader issue of easy mobile access is the key.\\n \\tPersonalization -\\xa0Your partners must be able to pick and chose the content they want to see in your\\xa0partner portal. To start with, the portal should allow partners to filter out content that is not relevant - by region, country, or partner tier type using content tagging, but partner portals should also provide focused content to specific groups of partners by function, g. sales, marketing, or technical. The more streamlined the information in your portal, the easier it will be for your partners to use. At ZINFI we see that more than 70% of vendors are still using a flat, or non-targeted content profile in their partner portals, which is overwhelming for most partners.\\n \\tSimplifying promotions -\\xa0Vendors with multiple product lines are constantly running a wide variety of promotions via their\\xa0partner portal.\\xa0However,\\xa0if the partner doesn\\u2019t see a logical connection to the vendor initiatives, and furthermore if the promotions are not related to the differing maturity stages of the partner, then you are anesthetizing the channel with an avalanche of information that has nothing to do with them.\\n \\tTracking metrics -\\xa0We are now in the age of content marketing. This means that it is the value your\\xa0partner portal brings to the channel is dependent on your understanding of what content is useful to specific groups of partners, and what isn\\u2019t. Yes, you need a dynamic\\xa0partner portal content management\\xa0capability, without which you cannot serve up the right content to the right partner. For a vendor with global reach, this may require an incremental investment of a few thousand dollars per month, but within a few months you are going to reap significant benefit from your partner base by stimulating them to self-educate, improve their knowledge and manage better \\u2013 all because you will be able to identify how to help them based on data, rather than on opinions or anecdotal feedback.\\n\\nThe great news is that you now have a choice of best-in-class\\xa0partner portal content management systems\\xa0that you can deploy to migrate your\\xa0partner portal\\xa0piece by piece. This doesn\\u2019t need to be a multi-year program,'