All, Partner Portal

ZINFI Partner Portal Is FVC’s Key to Staying Agile in a Competitive Marketplace

Introduction

For Prakash Krishnamurthy, Chief Sales Officer at the Dubai-based technology company FVC, agility, speed and technical competence are the key traits that help FVC stand out in a dynamic and highly competitive business environment.

The Dubai-based company provides IT infrastructure solutions to customers across 55 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and those customers represent businesses in just about every vertical where advanced automation is a requirement, including the airline industry, government ministries, financial and banking institutions, oil and gas, and many others. “If our organization is more agile and my sales team is fast and moving quickly across the marketplace, then I have an edge over the competition,” he says. “I am into more places, I’m into more customers and I’m into more partners.”

FVC is a value-added technology distributor focusing on cyber security, unified collaboration and communication, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The company has been translating its clients’ business requirements into reliable, state-of-the-art IT solutions for 22 years, serving customers in just about every vertical where advanced, enterprise-scale collaboration, cyber-defense and process automation is a requirement, including the airline industry, government ministries, financial and banking institutions, oil and gas companies, and many more. FVC’s chief business challenge is to meet its promises to customers who require the latest technology delivered with absolute competence, and delivered on time.

How ZINFI Partner Portal helped

FVC is a partner of NETSCOUT—a provider of application and network performance management products—and also manages a network of nearly 650 channel partners of its own. As a NETSCOUT partner and a distributor focused primarily on NETSCOUT’s Core Network Assurance product line, FVC has been using the NETSCOUT partner portal for nearly six years. The partner portal is an integral part of a comprehensive partner relationship management platform from ZINFI, a leading global provider of Unified Partner Management software.

The ZINFI-powered partner portal is a crucial enabler for FVC’s sales and technical teams as they try to stay current on new technology from NETSCOUT. “In our business,” says Krishnamurthy, “technology is changing all the time. It has to be updated frequently — otherwise, you will lose out to the competition.” The portal keeps team members informed about product updates and new product launches with constant updates, including reports, marketing and sales assets, videos and new certification modules.

One of the portal’s most important functions is to provide FVC’s technical team with current training and certifications in NETSCOUT products. “When my technical and sales team members are certified, the customer feels more comfortable talking to the guys who are promoting that technology,” says Krishnamurthy.

Another important function provided by the partner portal is deal registration, says Krishnamurthy: “Let’s say I've got a partner who comes to me from Nigeria with a promising opportunity requiring NETSCOUT technology. He gives me the details and then I, using ZINFI’s deal registration module in the NETSCOUT partner portal, can lock up the opportunity with the partner to ensure that his deal is protected in his sales territory. This is very convenient for us, and it ensures the work we do and the work our partner is doing will be rewarded.”

Krishnamurthy’s technical team uses the partner portal “on a daily basis” to stay informed about NETSCOUT offerings, learn about new products and product updates, and earn certifications. Sales personnel use it to track leads as they proceed through different levels of qualification so the team stays up to date and is ready to go when it’s time to negotiate the final terms of a deal.

FVC employees also log into the portal regularly to explore new opportunities for their customer base. “We have regional field people who are sitting in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE who are logging in every week to look for new opportunities for their existing customers,” he says. The entire team loves the information and the visibility the portal provides. “The portal is frequently updated, and the navigation is very convenient. We are very happy with the user experience.”

Keeping customers engaged and satisfied is on ongoing process for FVC. Krishnamurthy and his colleagues must continually oversee a variety of technically demanding projects for dozens of large customers. At the same time, they must manage relationships with multiple technology vendors and hundreds of channel partners. “Every time we sign an agreement with a vendor, we need to do justice to them,” says Krishnamurthy. “We need to live up to our vendors’ expectations by delivering on our joint revenue goals “The whole process is very complex and detailed,” he says. “These are very sensitive solutions; these are not generic products.”