Do you need a Partner Portal if you’re already using Google Drive to share material with partners and distributors? The truth is that it depends on how important it is for you to give partners an easy experience, to maintain control over your material and have it stay secure. Here’s everything you need to know.
So, you’re currently using Google Drive to share material with partners or distributors? It’s not a bad way to do it, really; Google Drive is good for sharing a large volume of material fast. There are a few potential problems, though, including:
- The struggle of managing access rights: If you want to keep your material secure, working with Google Drive means that you probably have to juggle a ton of access rights that need to be added and revoked as your partner network changes. This can take a whole lot of time and may even be risky: there is always the risk that someone maintains access to material even when they shouldn’t, and a risk that a partner needs to wait for their access to be granted. Something that can halt their sales momentum and have them lose engagement.
- A difficult navigation: While it’s easy to share a huge folder with everything you have to offer, it may be rather hard for partners to find what they’re looking for fast.
- A lack of analytics: You may be able to get some basic data from Google Drive, but you’ll struggle to see exactly who uses what material, who shares what with whom – and what actually happens to your material. Which, in turn, can make it hard to maintain a consistent product message and make data-driven decisions. This, since you may not be able to tell what material is popular and what partners are actually engaged.
- Problems with version control: Google Drive can let you update material to a new version, but it doesn’t help if partners have already downloaded material or emailed it to someone. With that, there may be a ton of versions being shared and re-shared, without you being able to control it.
How can a partner portal solve these problems?
Partner portals can generally solve a number of these problems – and our own, SP_CE Partner Portal can solve them all. This, by giving you:
- Dedicated portals for each partner or distributor, where you can give or revoke access with a click and easily see exactly who can access them.
- Unique content repositories for each partner or distributor. Easily populate each portal with the material that is actually relevant and make content navigation an absolute breeze.
- Total analytics that let you see who uses what material, how it’s shared and who ends up with it.
- An easy version control that let you update material in one place and have it be reflected for ALL partners, distributors and end customers. I.e. your product message can be safe, and you won’t have to worry about having old versions floating around.
Curious to learn more? Contact us today to see how SP_CE works in action, or read more in our Partner Portal FAQ
