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Frequently Asked Questions – Allbound EMEA

You may know that we have a London office, but do you know how Allbound helps support our EMEA customers? Meshach Amuah-Fuster, Managing Director of EMEA at Allbound, answers all of the most frequently asked questions in four main areas:

  • Exploration
  • Strategy
  • Implementation and Support
  • Product

Exploration

Q. What is Allbound?

Allbound is a leading PRM (partner relationship management) solution designed to drive partner engagement. Allbound simplifies and automates partner management from partner onboarding, enablement, and activation – helping to ensure the partner experience is easy and helpful, with essential tools at their fingertips, from marketing to deal registration and training.

Q. What’s the difference between CRM and PRM?

Most businesses have a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that manages and monitors the details of that customer and follows the life cycle of interactions. A Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution extends a CRM to include “P” for Partner and so provides the details of the partner that sits between customer and vendor and all the relative interactions.  

Q. Can I give different partners different information on their view?

Yes, you can be very granular in who sees what. Technical people see technical content and the marketing teams see the appropriate marketing collateral. You can also decide which partner types have access to what or even segment regionally as well. Allbound enables you to segment your users in many ways with multiple roles and levels so there is a very personalised approach. This way you know everyone is seeing the exact right content.

Q. What are the key pillars that differentiate Allbound?

We elegantly deliver visibility, automation and engagement. Allbound believes that your channel success drives our success, so we don’t charge you for adding additional partners or users.

Q. Does Allbound conform with all GDPR and data security concerns?

Yes, Allbound keeps individual’s data private, and the partner data is only shared when specifically opted in.  

 

Q. How long will it take for me to find out if Allbound is right for me?

Typically, we have a 30-to-45-minute discovery call where we both ask questions and find out more. At the end of that call, we typically know if we are a good fit, one for the other. We can then follow up with demos to the wider team and more thorough due diligence. 

Q. We have 3 busy people in the channel team – how can Allbound help?

Allbound will alleviate your team from performing the repetitive tasks such as sending emails with collateral, training materials, or requesting information on deals. Many standard interactions are automated on the portal, where partners can self-serve. So, the team is freed up to build the relationship with the partner and do more constructive business planning. Allbound enables you to scale to more partners without increasing the size of the team. 

Q. I have looked at Salesforce communities and they look comprehensive for managing my partners – why would I use Allbound instead? 

SFDC is a powerful solution, but one reason vendors choose Allbound is our straightforward pricing model. We charge one flat rate for the platform and do not increase that as you add partners and users. This way you can engage and work with whole teams within your partners and know you will not incur additional costs. Also, Allbound does not require any heavy lifting nor customisation by our customers meaning we are not resource intensive.

Q. Does Allbound have a local European Infrastructure – i.e., a local cloud in EMEA?

Yes, Allbound can host the solution in EMEA or in the US with data centres in both the USA and Europe.  

 

Strategy

Q. We currently receive Google sheets from partners on the deals they are working on. How does Allbound make that more efficient?

This is not uncommon and Allbound can help by automating this process of deal registration and tracking – so both you and your partners can see how they are performing more easily. 

Q. How can I recruit more partners without taking on more staff?

Implementing a PRM solution will automate many of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks and so free up the team to work more closely with partners and be able to work more effectively, with more partners. 

Q. How can I make marketing easier for my partners?

Allbound enables you to easily share co-brandable collateral so that partners can easily build marketing campaigns. 

Q. I have a few good partners doing well, but I don’t really know what the rest are doing or how to help them do better? I guess it’s the classic 80:20 rule? 

Allbound PRM will enable you to track partner engagement and activity, so you know which partners are engaging with what content so that you can take the appropriate action. The Allbound platform provides learning journeys and workflows to ensure partners have all the necessary information to develop the skills to sell and build a business with your solution.  

Q. How can I make learning more fun for my partners? 

Allbound has gamification features that make learning easy, and fun as new content becomes available when they complete training or quizzes. 

 

Implementation and Support  

Q. How long does it take to implement Allbound?

Once an agreement is in place it takes days for your initial KO call, then after that you gain access to your portal. From there Allbound will guide you through the implementation process, guiding you through the process. Depending on your goals this takes weeks from KO to go live. 

Q. Does Allbound require coding to customise to our needs?

No, Allbound comes ready out-the-box and does not require any technical resources from our customers, for coding or customising, to implement. 

Q. Does Allbound have a customer success team and people located in EMEA?

Yes, we allocate each customer a dedicated customer success manager and implementation specialists and integration expert, with local people based in EMEA for our EMEA customers. This team works with the customer to ensure continued success. 

Q. What is the cost for Allbound migration and support?

There is no additional charge or cost for support through the implementation phase and beyond – there is no bank of hours to run out of. And we provide training for new staff members as and when required. 

Q. Can the Allbound platform represent the branding of the customer?

Yes, the Allbound experience is fully brandable. 

 

Product  

Q. How many languages are supported in Allbound?

Allbound provides a multitude of languages contained within the platform.

Q. What are Playbooks?

Playbooks are digital binders of content that are bundled together for ease of access to content. 

Q. What are Prospect Pages? 

Prospect pages are microsites where partners can deliver personalised content for the prospect – so pull any number of pieces of content from the Allbound content management platform and place them onto a site for partners to send as a unique link to prospects – far easier and more convenient than sending via an email. And you (and your partner), can track the engagement with that content. 

Q. What is Gamification?

Gamification is the way in which a system provides an experience to the user that replicates a game-design. This may involve the accumulation of points on completion of certain tasks or activities and those points may be redeemed against a reward. The application can show individual, personal targets or pitch the users against one another so only the highest achiever will win the rewards. 

Q. I expect to recruit more partners – will my costs go up for Allbound?

No, there is one flat rate cost per year for the Allbound Platform no matter how many partners or users are logging in. 

Q. With Allbound can I see who has looked at what content?

Yes, you can see who has engaged with what content. You can access detailed reports of what content is being more effective in what regions.

Do you have a question that we haven’t answered? Reach out to [email protected] and we’d be happy to help!