2013-02-11 13:47:05 - Participants’ questions show the various maturity levels of the partner business

Landau, Germany, February 11, 2013 – Channelplace, leading provider of a flexible partner collaboration management (PCM) platform started a series of open live demo webinars last Wednesday (February 6. 2013) which met with a lot of interest. Registra-tions for the German event lagged somewhat behind those for the English-language Webinar with the majority of interested parties of both webinars coming from the IT sec-tor. “As organizations differed in terms of size and maturity of their partner sales, so did their questions to Channelplace. While participants of the German-language Webinar were most interested in understanding the design and overall functionality, participants of the English-language Webinar formulated very specific questions about processes and integration." summarized Diana Ricken, Channelplace Sales Director. During the

set-up phase of an indirect sales channel, the administrative effort is usually manageable with increased staff commitment, a tight organization and standard tools. Once the number and complexity of the channel programs increase, as well as the number of partners, partner projects and partnership applications, the need for a partner collaboration portal that satisfies new demands on forecasting, communication, control, and reporting becomes apparent.

Jörg Rosenthal, Channelplace product manager, lists the most frequently asked ques-tions of the participants: "During the German Webinar, the top 3 questions focused on the classic core value propositions of partner relationship management (PRM). 1.) How can you manage channel programs and streamline the onboarding process for news new partner? 2.) How can partners register and update deals? 3.) How can we provide information and services for partners?" These are typical questions for companies al-ready actively managing their partner business and are now looking to a PRM solution for more efficient processes. "The topics of the English webinar were different" continues Jörg Rosenthal. “The questions focused on the following points: Does Channelplace integrate with CRM solutions? Can the rule-based workflows be adjusted to our requirements? Is licensing per user or per project? Can we provide information and content for partner Websites that includes the respective partner information such as logo or contact details? To what extent can the design of Channelplace be adapted to our corporate identity?"

"We are very pleased that our offer to demo and discuss our partner collaboration man-agement solution during these live webinars was so well received." notes Diana Ricken, Sales Manager Channelplace. "We will continue the webinar series in this format and are already looking at extending our offer to focus on special topics such as for example the integration with Salesforce.com, the customization options for the design, the configuration options for the workflows or how to set up cloud channels as opposed to traditional sales channel."

The next demo day is scheduled for the 27th of February with webinars at 10am MET (German) and 5pm MET (English). Details on webinar registration and on other events can be found on the Channelplace Website under services - events.

About Channelplace
Channelplace is a partner collaboration management (PCM) platform including complete partner relationship management (PRM) portal functionality. Designed for IT & High Tech vendors leveraging wide reach, multi-tier sales channels, our innovative cloud based solution covers the entire life cycle of successful channel relationships - from partner on-boarding to loyalty incentives. Our technology integrates with leading CRMs like salesforce.com and any web CMS. Channelplace is a business unit of wiora Software GmbH.