Sungard Availability Services‘ first move after being split off from Sungard is to revamp its channel partner technology system to help solution providers find sales and training material along with securing new opportunities through deal registration.
Called Sungard AS Partner Portal powered by Reseller View, the new portal will also provide access co-branded documents and have the ability for channel partners to secure MDF funds. Sungard completed the split-off of its Availability Services business now called Sungard AS in March of this year. Andrew Stern was named the CEO of Sungard AS; he previously was the lead executive of Sungard’s Availability Services unit. Sungard AS focuses on disaster recovery, managed hosting, Cloud, colocation, software, consulting and managed security.
The portal is being provided by TreeHouse Interactive of Draper, Utah and is integrated with Salesforce.com, which enables partners to tap into the Salesforce CRM ecosystem. Sungard AS demonstrated this new system at a Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Sungard AS saw a 20 per cent increase in partner leads through the new portal.
“Partners have a lot of options out there in the market wherein many businesses provide similar type of services. They wish to do business easily. In fact the easier it is to operate the better it is. Our online portal provides 24 hour access to online Sungard courses; partners can also easily register leads,” said Jim Schwartz, senior director of the Sungard AS channel program.
“We were working on a homogeneous system which was inflexible and it was difficult to find information there. It also faced a lot of downtime due to its complexity. We have now improved to a very flexible website which provides clear, concise and easy to access portal. When someone registers a lead they get an email and are kept up to date with all the developments that take place with that lead,” he added.
Sungard AS is also making its email marketing service free of charge for solution providers to help them promote new offers or keep in touch with customers. This will also save them a lot of time in terms of having to set up email campaigns, Schwartz said.
“Other major benefits include collateral placed on the Web site wherein partners can add their logo to materials and send it to their customers. The best part is that partners can download their email list and send emails with no cost. The email marketing service is easy to use and will save partners a lot of time and money.”