8×8 Rolls Out New Partner Portal to Drive Sales

Cloud services provider 8×8 Tuesday launched PartnerXchange, a single platform aimed at making it easier for partners to do business with the company globally.

PartnerXchange allows partners to: submit deal registrations and connect to information needed to drive sales; locate partner-ready marketing tools to generate demand; access real-time status on sales opportunities and support cases; click through to access training and certification; and access self-service capabilities for administrators.

John DeLozier, 8×8’s channel chief, tells Channel Partners his company is “always looking for ways to enhance the partner experience.”

8×8’s John DeLozier

“We wanted a familiar and reliable platform, but needed it to be more agile and scalable, more of a business driver,” he said. “This allows us to continue to drive our solution sales and one system of intelligence in X Series.”

Earlier this month, 8×8 introduced a series of new capabilities to its X Series, the cloud-based technology platform for business communications and contact center. The new capabilities include advanced speech analytics, an enhanced integration framework and real-time dashboards that 8×8 says will help businesses of all sizes to accelerate growth by improving communication experiences between employees and customers.

8×8‘s channel team in the field is constantly receiving feedback from partners, and the company hosted a focus group with some of its strategic partners to get their input, DeLozier said. All of this went into decision making around the new PartnerXchange platform.

“We now offer new deal-registration features that allow partners to have greater visibility into their customer cases and status,” he said. “They are able to comment and escalate right from within the portal, thus decreasing response times and times for resolutions to be made. Second, the letter of authorization (LOA) capability allows partners to get support on behalf of customers very quickly, as their trusted advisers. Lastly, there [are] now new self-service administration features for partners that allow them to enable/disable their own users. These are just a few of many enhancements. Very effective, very sleek.”

“We are excited for the launch of 8×8’s PartnerXchange, which puts all of the information and tools we need to successfully sell 8×8 solutions at our fingertips,” said Karin Fields, CEO of master agent MicroCorp. “In today’s 24/7, always on business environment, we can now compete more effectively in order to win deals and exceed customer expectations.”