Selling via an indirect sales channel is never easy, especially if you are trying to do it at a global level with multiple product lines catering to all kinds of verticals. The complexity of managing such a channel can be overwhelming, and that complexity can also make it really hard for partners to do business with the vendor. This is where purpose-built partner relationship management (PRM) software can help. In this article, we will explore how PRM software can significantly enhance the ease of doing business for a vendor’s partner base.

Before we discuss the benefits of PRM software, however, let’s explore some of the core challenges partners face as they do business with a vendor selling through the channel.

Complex program and partner relationship management requirements – Most vendors selling through the channel have built their channel program over the years, and the cost of change and/or the fear of change have prevented vendors from simplifying their channel programs. The combination of program complexity, a patchwork of partner portal applications, and a lack of purpose-built PRM software can make doing business very complex.

The portal is not mobile-friendly – The partner portal is the first and last handshake a partner has with the vendor. However, if you are not using purpose-built PRM software, it’s likely your portal is not fully mobile-responsive and the patchwork of applications you use to manage your partner relationships is really hard to navigate via a mobile interface. This is a critical hurdle that partners must struggle to overcome every time they log on.

Hard–to-find content – A primary purpose of your partner portal is to allow your partners to self-serve and access the many vendor-provided channel programs that are in place without calling the vendor for assistance. Without a purpose-built partner portal powered by world-class PRM software, however, searching for and finding relevant marketing assets, programs, sales materials, and other content can be very difficult.

Complicated navigation – If your partner portal has evolved over the years and has become a patched-up quilt of discrete applications, chances are most of the applications (partner contracts, training, incentives, deal registrations, etc.) come from different vendors and there is little navigational consistency. The multiplicity of interfaces can be downright confusing. This is where purpose-built PRM software that encompasses end-to-end channel management can make a big difference, providing users with a clean, consistent, logical interface that remains the same wherever they are within the portal.

Lack of dynamic alerts – Keeping partners informed in a way that is useful to them is critical. That’s why partners need to be able to configure and manage alerts for their own unique purposes—whether the alerts have to do with deal registration, incentives approval, or training certification expirations. Unfortunately, most partner portals do not allow this to happen. If you deploy purpose-built PRM software, however, you can absolutely overcome this issue and enable partners to manage their alert-based workflows much better and faster.

All in all, doing business is hard, even frustrating, for your partners if have not properly deployed and configured PRM software to power your partner portal and programs. So now let’s explore in more detail how state-of-the-art PRM software can help your partners overcome these challenges.

Streamline partner onboarding – Partner engagement starts with the recruitment of new partners into current programs and existing partners into new programs. Properly built PRM software can significantly augment and automate the partner onboarding process.

Make agreement management easy – The first step in getting a partner onboarded is signing agreements. For many organizations, this is a painstaking, manual process that is difficult to keep track of. However,

Selling via an indirect sales channel is never easy, especially if you are trying to do it at a global level with multiple product lines catering to all kinds of verticals. The complexity of managing such a channel can be overwhelming, and that complexity can also make it really hard for partners to do business with the vendor. This is where purpose-built partner relationship management (PRM) software can help. In this article, we will explore how PRM software can significantly enhance the ease of doing business for a vendor’s partner base.

Before we discuss the benefits of PRM software, however, let’s explore some of the core challenges partners face as they do business with a vendor selling through the channel.

* Complex program and partner relationship management requirements – Most vendors selling through the channel have built their channel program over the years, and the cost of change and/or the fear of change have prevented vendors from simplifying their channel programs. The combination of program complexity, a patchwork of partner portal applications, and a lack of purpose-built PRM software can make doing business very complex.

* The portal is not mobile-friendly – The partner portal is the first and last handshake a partner has with the vendor. However, if you are not using purpose-built PRM software, it’s likely your portal is not fully mobile-responsive and the patchwork of applications you use to manage your partner relationships is really hard to navigate via a mobile interface. This is a critical hurdle that partners must struggle to overcome every time they log on.

* Hard–to-find content – A primary purpose of your partner portal is to allow your partners to self-serve and access the many vendor-provided channel programs that are in place without calling the vendor for assistance. Without a purpose-built partner portal powered by world class PRM software, however, searching for and finding relevant marketing assets, programs, sales materials and other content can be very difficult.

* Complicated navigation – If your partner portal has evolved over the years and has become a patched-up quilt of discrete applications, chances are most of the applications (partner contracts, training, incentives, deal registrations, etc.) come from different vendors and there is little navigational consistency. The multiplicity of interfaces can be downright confusing. This is where purpose-built PRM software that encompasses end-to-end channel management can make a big difference, providing users with a clean, consistent, logical interface that remains the same wherever they are within the portal.

* Lack of dynamic alerts – Keeping partners informed in a way that us useful to them is critical. That’s why partners need to be able to configure and manage alerts for their own unique purposes—whether the alerts have to do with deal registration or incentives approval or training certification expirations. Unfortunately, most partner portals do not allow this to happen. If you deploy purpose-built PRM software, however, you can absolutely overcome this issue and enable partners to manage their alert-based workflows much better and faster.

All in all,

Selling via an indirect sales channel is never easy, especially if you are trying to do it at a global level with multiple product lines catering to all kinds of verticals. The complexity of managing such a channel can be overwhelming, and that complexity can also make it really hard for partners to do business with the vendor. This is where purpose-built partner relationship management (PRM) software can help. In this article, we will explore how PRM software can significantly enhance the ease of doing business for a vendor’s partner base.Before we discuss the benefits of PRM software, however, let’s explore some of the core challenges partners face as they do business with a vendor selling through the channel.* Complex program and partner relationship management requirements – Most vendors selling through the channel have built their channel program over the years, and the cost of change and/or the fear of change have prevented vendors from simplifying their channel programs. The combination of program complexity, a patchwork of partner portal applications, and a lack of purpose-built PRM software can make doing business very complex.* The portal is not mobile-friendly – The partner portal is the first and last handshake a partner has with the vendor. However, if you are not using purpose-built PRM software, it’s likely your portal is not fully mobile-responsive and the patchwork of applications you use to manage your partner relationships is really hard to navigate via a mobile interface. This is a critical hurdle that partners must struggle to overcome every time they log on.* Hard–to-find content – A primary purpose of your partner portal is to allow your partners to self-serve and access the many vendor-provided channel programs that are in place without calling the vendor for assistance. Without a purpose-built partner portal powered by world class PRM software, however, searching for and finding relevant marketing assets, programs, sales materials and other content can be very difficult.* Complicated navigation – If your partner portal has evolved over the years and has become a patched-up quilt of discrete applications, chances are most of the applications (partner contracts, training, incentives, deal registrations, etc.) come from different vendors and there is little navigational consistency. The multiplicity of interfaces can be downright confusing. This is where purpose-built PRM software that encompasses end-to-end channel management can make a big difference, providing users with a clean, consistent, logical interface that remains the same wherever they are within the portal.* Lack of dynamic alerts – Keeping partners informed in a way that us useful to them is critical. That’s why partners need to be able to configure and manage alerts for their own unique purposes—whether the alerts have to do with deal registration or incentives approval or training certification expirations. Unfortunately, most partner portals do not allow this to happen. If you deploy purpose-built PRM software, however, you can absolutely overcome this issue and enable partners to manage their alert-based workflows much better and faster.All in all, doing business is hard, even frustrating, for your partners if have not properly deployed and configured PRM software to power your partner portal and programs. So now let’s explore in more detail how state-of-the-art PRM soft...

The concept of partner relationship management software has been around for a couple of decades. However, most of the platforms really haven’t taken off for some pretty specific reasons. The primary reasons have revolved around the cost and complexities involved in deployment. However, over the last five or 10 years or so, several companies offering partner relationship management software have made considerable progress—not only in reducing cost but also in modularizing the software functionalities in a way that allows vendors to deploy the software in a logical and sequential order that makes sense for their own organization. In this article, we will talk about the six main benefits of deploying partner relationship management software.

Streamline partner onboarding: If you are in a company with a large channel or if you are in a company that is trying to expand your channel, chances are you’re trying to recruit new partners. If you’re trying to recruit new partners into your channel programs and they’re using a manual process, you are wasting a lot of internal resources by doing things manually that properly configured partner relationship management software can do much more efficiently. You’re also creating friction within each engagement and with the partners that you are trying recruit. Properly configured partner relationship management software can significantly streamline your onboarding process. It reduces costs, it increases partner satisfaction and it also increases visibility into the entire partner onboarding process.

Realize new efficiencies from automating the learning management and certification process: Today most vendors selling to the channel have some kind of learning management system (LMS) in place. However, typically these systems do not connect properly with other subsystems. Therefore, the LMS is often managed as an island by the training and learning team, and is rarely fully integrated into the overall channel management process, especially when it comes to channel account managers or business manager infrastructure. Properly configured partner relationship management software can significantly increase the efficiency with which you manage your partner base and the learning and certification processes associated with it.

Speed up distribution of co-branded assets: Today most vendors have a partner portal which they use for communicating with the partners about programs and about the progress that the vendor is making with the business. But as a part of the process they also distribute co-branded assets. A properly configured partner relationship management software platform will significantly increase the speed with which these assets are distributed from the agency that is creating them to the partner marketing team that is going to use them. But that's not all. The partner can also log in and co-brand an asset online, which increases partner satisfaction. It also allows vendors see which partner is downloading which assets, and whether they are working or not.

Reduce the labor and complexities associated with lead management: If you are selling to the channel—say, the mid-market and enterprise markets across all verticals—chances are you have some sort of a deal protection program in place. If your partners are accessing your CRM, or some other homegrown online tool, it’s likely the process is cumbersome, creates conflicts, lacks visibility and doesn’t give you the control you need to operate like a 21st century organization. Here again, a properly configured partner relationship management software platform can significantly streamline your lead management distribution as well as your deal registration program—thereby reducing the costs and labor involved, but also increasing partner satisfaction and eliminating the channel conflicts that arise when you try to manage by using spreadsheets or some other documents that are not fully automated.

The concept of partner relationship management software has been around for a couple of decades. However, most of the platforms really haven’t taken off for some pretty specific reasons. The primary reasons have revolved around the cost and complexities involved in deployment. However, over the last five or 10 years or so, several companies offering partner relationship management software have made considerable progress—not only in reducing cost but also in modularizing the software functionalities in a way that allows vendors to deploy the software in a logical and sequential order that makes sense for their own organization. In this article, we will talk about the six main benefits of deploying partner relationship management software.

Streamline partner onboarding: If you are in a company with a large channel or if you are in a company that is trying to expand your channel, chances are you’re trying to recruit new partners. If you’re trying to recruit new partners into your channel programs and they’re using a manual process, you are wasting a lot of internal resources by doing things manually that properly configured partner relationship management software can do much more efficiently. You’re also creating friction within each engagement and with the partners that you are trying recruit. Properly configured partner relationship management software can significantly streamline your onboarding process. It reduces costs, it increases partner satisfaction and it also increases visibility into the entire partner onboarding process.

Realize new efficiencies from automating the learning management and certification process: Today most vendors selling to the channel have some kind of learning management system (LMS) in place. However, typically these systems do not connect properly with other subsystems. Therefore, the LMS is often managed as an island by the training and learning team, and is rarely fully integrated into the overall channel management process, especially when it comes to channel account managers or business manager infrastructure. Properly configured partner relationship management software can significantly increase the efficiency with which you manage your partner base and the learning and certification processes associated with it.

Speed up distribution of co-branded assets: Today most vendors have a partner portal which they use for communicating with the partners about programs and about the progress that the vendor is making with the business. But as a part of the process they also distribute co-branded assets. A properly configured partner relationship management software platform will significantly increase the speed with which these assets are distributed from the agency that is creating them to the partner marketing team that is going to use them. But that's not all. The partner can also log in and co-brand an asset online, which increases partner satisfaction. It also allows vendors see which partner is downloading which assets, and whether they are working or not.

Reduce the labor and complexities associated with lead management: If you are selling to the channel—say, the mid-market and enterprise markets across all verticals—chances are you have some sort of a deal protection program in place. If your partners are accessing your CRM, or some other homegrown online tool,

Companies selling to the channel need to understand some of the core principles of partner relationship management. In other articles we have discussed why partner relationship management fails, and why it is important to avoid those failure modes. It is even more important to avoid a few core mistakes that many organizations make either intentionally or unintentionally. In this article we’ll explore the five core mistakes that we see vendors across the channel making consistently. These are mistakes that can easily be avoided with some thought and pre-planning.

Overdistribution: If your organization is focused on partner relationship management and you want to drive high-level partner satisfaction, it is essential to make sure your partners know you care about their business and not just your own. It’s common for vendors to send the wrong signal to their partner base by announcing a recruitment and expansion program. While this makes perfect sense if you are trying to expand territories where you have no presence and want to add geographies or countries where you don’t currently do business, it is incredibly important to make sure in a market where you already have a presence that you don’t send the wrong signal and undermine your partner relationships. One of the best ways of avoiding this kind of mistakes is to perform partner profile and potential analysis. For example, if you’re selling into large countries like the US, Germany, France or the UK, and have been doing so for a while, chances are you already have a decent infrastructure for partner relationship management. If you have data that describes your partners in a great degree of detail--who they are, what their competencies are, what they do--then you can analyze your partner profiles to determine the potential of that base. Instead of recruiting more partners to go sell into those markets, you may be better off making investments with existing partners to help them sell more and become more engaged. Or you may want to focus on the partners that have potential to sell more but still haven’t lived up to that potential in actual sales. You can make these distinctions by actively analyzing your partners’ profiles and their potential, which will help you avoid the mistake of over-distribution.

Overpromise and underdeliver: This is a deadly sin when it comes to partner relationship management. Just like you, partners are busy. If you make a promise, they’re going to rely on you to deliver. If you or your organization is not capable of delivery—whether it’s a bug fix in the technology or improvements in B2C segments or a revised incentive structure that customers have asked for—don’t try to avoid a near-term conflict by agreeing to improvements even though you know that you are unlikely to be able to deliver. Just like in any relationship, in partner relationship management overpromising destroys trust instantly. Therefore, it is better to take the bullet now rather than get completely drowned later on in mistrust and issues associated with it. You are friends with your partners. Tell them honestly why you cannot address certain problems immediately. As long as they understand that you have empathy and you have a business reason for prioritizing specific ideas and needs over others you are currently working on, they will understand. They are business people—just like you. Now, in the process you may lose certain partners, which is okay. But in the end, you’re going to end up having a loyal partner base that values your open communication style. So follow the “underpromise and overdeliver” mantra--not the other way around.

Complex incentive programs: We see these mistakes related to incentives programs being made in partner relationship management again and again. This can be avoided with an annual review of your incentive structure to make sure what partners have to do to earn incentives is in alignment both with your business objectives and your partners’ ...

Companies selling to the channel need to understand some of the core principles of partner relationship management. In other articles we have discussed why partner relationship management fails, and why it is important to avoid those failure modes. It is even more important to avoid a few core mistakes that many organizations make either intentionally or unintentionally. In this article we’ll explore the five core mistakes that we see vendors across the channel making consistently. These are mistakes that can easily be avoided with some thought and pre-planning.

* Overdistribution: If your organization is focused on partner relationship management and you want to drive high-level partner satisfaction, it is essential to make sure your partners know you care about their business and not just your own. It’s common for vendors to send the wrong signal to their partner base by announcing a recruitment and expansion program. While this makes perfect sense if you are trying to expand territories where you have no presence and want to add geographies or countries where you don’t currently do business, it is incredibly important to make sure in a market where you already have a presence that you don’t send the wrong signal and undermine your partner relationships. One of the best ways of avoiding this kind of mistakes is to perform partner profile and potential analysis. For example, if you’re selling into large countries like the US, Germany, France or the UK, and have been doing so for a while, chances are you already have a decent infrastructure for partner relationship management. If you have data that describes your partners in a great degree of detail--who they are, what their competencies are, what they do--then you can analyze your partner profiles to determine the potential of that base. Instead of recruiting more partners to go sell into those markets, you may be better off making investments with existing partners to help them sell more and become more engaged. Or you may want to focus on the partners that have potential to sell more but still haven’t lived up to that potential in actual sales. You can make these distinctions by actively analyzing your partners’ profiles and their potential, which will help you avoid the mistake of over-distribution.

* Overpromise and underdeliver: This is a deadly sin when it comes to partner relationship management. Just like you, partners are busy. If you make a promise, they’re going to rely on you to deliver. If you or your organization is not capable of delivery—whether it’s a bug fix in the technology or improvements in B2C segments or a revised incentive structure that customers have asked for—don’t try to avoid a near-term conflict by agreeing to improvements even though you know that you are unlikely to be able to deliver. Just like in any relationship, in partner relationship management overpromising destroys trust instantly. Therefore, it is better to take the bullet now rather than get completely drowned later on in mistrust and issues associated with it. You are friends with your partners. Tell them honestly why you cannot address certain problems immediately. As long as they understand that you have empathy and you have a business reason for prioritizing specific ideas and needs over others you are currently working on, they will understand. They are business people—just like you. Now, in the process you may lose certain partners, which is okay. But in the end, you’re going to end up having a loyal partner base that values your open communication style. So follow the “underpromise and overdeliver” mantra--not the other way around.

* Complex incentive programs: We see these mistakes related to incentives programs being made in partner relationship management again and ag...

Companies selling to the channel need to understand some of the core principles of partner relationship management. In other articles we have discussed why partner relationship management fails, and why it is important to avoid those failure modes. It is even more important to avoid a few core mistakes that many organizations make either intentionally or unintentionally. In this article we’ll explore the five core mistakes that we see vendors across the channel making consistently. These are mistakes that can easily be avoided with some thought and pre-planning.* Overdistribution: If your organization is focused on partner relationship management and you want to drive high-level partner satisfaction, it is essential to make sure your partners know you care about their business and not just your own. It’s common for vendors to send the wrong signal to their partner base by announcing a recruitment and expansion program. While this makes perfect sense if you are trying to expand territories where you have no presence and want to add geographies or countries where you don’t currently do business, it is incredibly important to make sure in a market where you already have a presence that you don’t send the wrong signal and undermine your partner relationships. One of the best ways of avoiding this kind of mistakes is to perform partner profile and potential analysis. For example, if you’re selling into large countries like the US, Germany, France or the UK, and have been doing so for a while, chances are you already have a decent infrastructure for partner relationship management. If you have data that describes your partners in a great degree of detail–who they are, what their competencies are, what they do–then you can analyze your partner profiles to determine the potential of that base. Instead of recruiting more partners to go sell into those markets, you may be better off making investments with existing partners to help them sell more and become more engaged. Or you may want to focus on the partners that have potential to sell more but still haven’t lived up to that potential in actual sales. You can make these distinctions by actively analyzing your partners’ profiles and their potential, which will help you avoid the mistake of over-distribution.* Overpromise and underdeliver: This is a deadly sin when it comes to partner relationship management. Just like you, partners are busy. If you make a promise, they’re going to rely on you to deliver. If you or your organization is not capable of delivery—whether it’s a bug fix in the technology or improvements in B2C segments or a revised incentive structure that customers have asked for—don’t try to avoid a near-term conflict by agreeing to improvements even though you know that you are unlikely to be able to deliver. Just like in any relationship, in partner relationship management overpromising destroys trust instantly. Therefore, it is better to take the bullet now rather than get completely drowned later on in mistrust and issues associated with it. You are friends with your partners. Tell them honestly why you cannot address certain problems immediately. As long as they understand that you have empathy and you have a business reason for prioritizing specific ideas and needs over others you are currently working on, they will understand. They are business people—just like you. Now, in the process you may lose certain partners, which is okay. But in the end, you’re going to end up having a loyal partner base that values your open communication style. So follow the “underpromise and overdeliver” mantra–not the other way around.* Complex incentive programs: We see these mistakes related to incentives programs being made in partner relationship management again and again. This can be avoided with an annual review of your incentive structur...

If you are selling through the channel, it is probably safe to assume that you have a partner portal. There’s nothing ground-breaking about that. However, this is 2016. Do you know when your partner portal was built and with what technologies? Why does it matter? Well, do you still use a typewriter? I doubt it—typewriters are obsolete. So why would anyone want to use a partner portal built on obsolete software? I’ll have more to say on that later, but before we get into the weeds here, let’s step back for a second and look at the history of partner portals and how they have been built over the years.

Past (1985 to 2000)

If you were selling through the channel in 1990s, chances are you had an extranet whose purpose was to provide your partners with access to price lists, datasheets, collateral, etc. so that they wouldn’t have to wait for printed materials to arrive. The partner portal software was very basic. Actually, it was essentially a website with external login capabilities connected with some sort of a directory systems that mapped users. That’s about it.

Now, during this phase a few companies like Channelware (which actually coined the term “partner relationship management”), Channel Wave and Blue Roads raised millions of dollars in funding to create more sophisticated and functional portals, but they eventually went out of business due to lack of business adoption, lack of complete solution sets, high prices, complicated deployment and a lack of a full web services infrastructure. So despite the fact that several organizations had the right idea, the market was not ready for widespread adoption—or one could argue these companies couldn’t supply what the market needed at that point with their versions of a partner portal software solution.

Present (2000 - 2015)

Most companies who started in the late 1990s to build and develop partner portal software were not successful and shut down by early to mid-2000s. However, with the explosion of Internet-related businesses in the dot-com boom and the proliferation of enterprise application companies, point solution products tied to incentives management, rewards, rebates, etc. started to evolve. Companies selling through the channel realized that they could use their customer relationship management (CRM) platform to automate some of the workflow as well. So naturally, due to lack of any integrated end-to-end solutions, companies started to patch together partner portal software of various types.

However, this patchwork of discrete point solutions created complexity, made the partner experience less than desirable, and made the total cost of ownership unbearable for organizations selling through the channel. Also, due to long buying cycles—and given the past failures of other vendors—very few new vendors for partner portal software entered the marketplace. Most players in the partner portal software space today are left over from the second wave of patched-up solutions and very few have a truly complete vision of what the future of partner portal software will look like.

Future (2015-2030)

Nils Bohr, a Nobel laureate in physics, was once quoted as saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Well, we have also heard that the best way to predict the future is to create it. So I’d like to talk about what we at ZINFI believe about the future of partner portal software and what we are doing to create that future. We believe the future of partner portal software requires seven MAGICAL elements. The partner portal software of the future will be…:

Modular: That’s because enterprises are not going to rip and replace their entire infrastructure, and because there will be very few companies who can compete without a fully end-to-end automation platform in place.

Adaptive: As companies turn on different modules of the partner portal software, these modules have to fit into an existing infrastructure and have to adapt to ...

If you are selling through the channel, it is probably safe to assume that you have a partner portal. There’s nothing ground-breaking about that. However, this is 2016. Do you know when your partner portal was built and with what technologies? Why does it matter? Well, do you still use a typewriter? I doubt it—typewriters are obsolete. So why would anyone want to use a partner portal built on obsolete software? I’ll have more to say on that later, but before we get into the weeds here, let’s step back for a second and look at the history of partner portals and how they have been built over the years.

Past (1985 to 2000)

If you were selling through the channel in 1990s, chances are you had an extranet whose purpose was to provide your partners with access to price lists, datasheets, collateral, etc. so that they wouldn’t have to wait for printed materials to arrive. The partner portal software was very basic. Actually, it was essentially a website with external login capabilities connected with some sort of a directory systems that mapped users. That’s about it.

Now, during this phase a few companies like Channelware (which actually coined the term “partner relationship management”), Channel Wave and Blue Roads raised millions of dollars in funding to create more sophisticated and functional portals, but they eventually went out of business due to lack of business adoption, lack of complete solution sets, high prices, complicated deployment and a lack of a full web services infrastructure. So despite the fact that several organizations had the right idea, the market was not ready for widespread adoption—or one could argue these companies couldn’t supply what the market needed at that point with their versions of a partner portal software solution.

Present (2000 - 2015)

Most companies who started in the late 1990s to build and develop partner portal software were not successful and shut down by early to mid-2000s. However, with the explosion of Internet-related businesses in the dot-com boom and the proliferation of enterprise application companies, point solution products tied to incentives management, rewards, rebates, etc. started to evolve. Companies selling through the channel realized that they could use their customer relationship management (CRM) platform to automate some of the workflow as well. So naturally, due to lack of any integrated end-to-end solutions, companies started to patch together partner portal software of various types.

However, this patchwork of discrete point solutions created complexity, made the partner experience less than desirable, and made the total cost of ownership unbearable for organizations selling through the channel. Also, due to long buying cycles—and given the past failures of other vendors—very few new vendors for partner portal software entered the marketplace. Most players in the partner portal software space today are left over from the second wave of patched-up solutions and very few have a truly complete vision of what the future of partner portal software will look like.

Future (2015-2030)

Nils Bohr, a Nobel laureate in physics, was once quoted as saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Well, we have also heard that the best way to predict the future is to create it. So I’d like to talk about what we at ZINFI believe about the future of partner portal software and what we are doing to create that future.