2018 Q2 Updates

Our release notes offer brief, high-level descriptions of enhancements and new features. 

Contents

• Personal Data Security within Zift PRM
• Data Processing Consent Report
• Opt-In Subscription Management
• Zift Channel as a Service (CHaaS) - Best Practice for Enterprise Channel Management
• Synchronized Partner Management between Zift PRM and Zift CMM
• Partner Registration Forms
• Company Registration Form
• Person Registration Form
• Partner Approval Process- Identifying Registration Approvers
• Business Plan Approvals
• Business Rules Engine
• Configuring Screens - New Capabilities
• Standardized Zift PRM URLs
• Partner Manager Home Screen
• View your Accounts in Partner Manager

Personal Data Security within Zift PRM

To coincide with the recent introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation legislation across Europe.

We’ve reviewed all aspects of data security across Zift PRM software and our SaaS services. Zift PRM adheres to the highest standards of data security and provides customers with all the required features for managing personal data (notification, reporting, removal etc). We have recently renewed our SOC 2 Type II certification. Learn more here.

To ensure that all customers can capture Opt-in Data Processing Consent, we have
added additional fields to each of our standard data capture forms as follows:

• Partner registration
• My Profile
• Partner Locator (Contact a Re-seller)
• Partner Locator (Search Results Listing)
• Add Lead
• Add Opportunity
• Add Person

These screens now include a checkbox field to capture data processing consent, plus a text
area where Suppliers can insert explanatory text describing how they will process the captured
data. 

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Data Processing Consent Report

A new report lists the Date and Text of data processing consent received from each partner
user.  This report is located as a Person Screen within the Partner View.

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Opt-In Subscription Management

Changes have been made to the Subscribe feature within Communications Manager, which is generally used for To Partner Marketing.  By default, partners will be asked to "opt in" to receive marketing communications from the Supplier. The Opt-In feature provides the opportunity to manage subscriptions by Communication Type.  It should be noted that this Opt- In Subscription does not control the sending of standard or triggered emails, which are essential to the execution of business processes within Zift PRM.

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Zift Channel as a Service (CHaaS) - Best Practices for Enterprise Channel Management

Zift Channel as a Service (CHaaS) provides embedded best practices for Enterprise Channel Management (ECM) to ensure faster time to value and confidence your program will deliver the best possible ROI.  We continually review our “out of the box” configuration to meet this commitment, and incorporate regular updates. In Q2 2018 we updated the following processes as part of our commitment to delivering ECM to our customers:

• Synchronization between Zift PRM and Zift CMM
• Partner Registration & Approval
• Incentive Rewards
• Business Plan Approvals

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Synchronized Partner Management between Zift PRM and Zift CMM

Many customers are now gaining the advantages of integration between Zift’s PRM and CMM solutions for through-partner marketing programs which partners to generate productive leads. With one-step partner registration, onboarding, and management, Zift is providing both the most capable and easiest to administer solution in the marketplace. Customers can designate which partners should have visibility and access to CMM for through partner marketing, either individually, or by selecting partners who meet the criteria of their choice. Partner Management is also provided as a self-service option for Portal Primary Contacts, with User Management screens where they can fully control the access rights of their colleagues as required.

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Partner Recruitment and Onboarding

Partner Registration Forms

The standard Partner Registration Forms capture application information from partners and
partner contacts who wish to join your program and gain access to your Zift portals.  You can include questions to discover whether each applicant is the right fit for your business, and pass that information to your partner via the integrated Approval process. 

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Company Registration Form

New qualification questions have been added to Location Profiles on Company Registration forms. Users have the option to re-arrange these questions, change or hide them, and add additional ones to create the perfect registration form. New questions include:

• How long has your company been in business?
• Total number of employees?
• How many employees does your company have in each role?
• What primary geographic region does your company sell to?
• Why do you want to become a partner?
• Which other companies are you in partnership with?
• What Added Services does your company offer?
• How many customers do you have?
• Annual Revenue Profile
• What kind of marketing campaigns does your company run?
• What customer segments does your company address?

For Registration Approvers, accessing this info via the Zift PRM application, these questions are grouped by Qualification sections, and supplemented by off-system checks such as “Credit Check Complete?” to follow best practices for new partner recruitment,onboarding and segmentation.

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 Person Registration Form

The questions on Person Registration Forms have been updated with friendly language and new picklist values. Customers have the option to re-arrange these questions, change or hide them, and add additional ones to create the perfect registration form. The questions follow recommended best practices for recruitment processes. Where appropriate, you can also use the same picklist values as Salesforce.com, for ease of integration.

Confirmation messages, which are displayed after the Registration Form has been submitted, have also been updated. These can easily be changed and customized to meet specific program requirements.

Partner Approval Process - identifying registration approvers

We’ve simplified the process of assigning an Administrative User to the role of Registration Approver. When adding a new user via the User Management screen, simply check the Registration Approver checkbox. You will then be invited to select which Countries or Country Groups this Approver is responsible for. You can assign several Approvers per Country if required. It is no longer necessary to amend the Standard Email or Workflows to add new Approvers. If a new Partner Application is received for a Country where no Registration Approvers have been assigned, then an email will be sent to the designated Administrator in your company. The list of Registration Approvers can be reviewed using a new Report: PRM > Administration > Reports > Approvers by Country.

When partners request rewards or prizes as part of your incentive program, there is the option
to route these requests for approval before fulfilling them. As requested by customers, we
have added the following three new standard notification emails to this workflow.

• Notification to PRM administrator that approval is required for an incentive
  reward/prize.
• Notification to the Partner that their incentive reward/prize has been Approved.
• Notification to the Partner that their incentive reward/prize has been Rejected.

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Business Plan Approvals

The screen that is presented to Approvers of Business Plans have new configuration options for the pop-up approval window:

• Heading text is configurable as a translatable phrase
• A sub-heading or explanatory text box can be added as a translatable phrase
• Select which columns to display

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Business Rules Engine

Two new enhancements have been added to the Zift PRM Approvals Engine.

• Custom Activity Scores - Zift PRM Activity Scores offer over 50 standard Zift PRM Activities to include in your scoring rules. Now, you can add Custom Activities based on any Module or Entity within ZiftPRM that relate to a Person, Location or Organization. This includes Custom Entities set up using the Business Rules Engine. For example, you can add scores related to the Entity IncentiveClaim, which would be associated with a Location. When a record on the incentive claim custom entity is set to be approved, the system will trigger the custom activity and add to the relevant Activity Scores according to your rules.
• Import Data from Spreadsheet for Custom Entities - Import data into Zift PRM from a spreadsheet as a simple alternative to API integration. We’ve added a new Partner Data Import Tool, so that you can load data directly from a spreadsheet into any Custom Entity set up in your application, such as Business Plan Objective, Support Request, or Warranty Claims. The import tool also supports the Lead, Person, Location and Organization Objects. Just pick the Entity you require, choose between Upload New Data or Update Existing Data, and add your spreadsheet.

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Configuring Screens - New Capabilities

Two new configuration options are available to create customized data capture screens:

• Tabbed Layout Option - For longer data capture screens, fields can be grouped within logical Tabs. Each Tab can be saved before the entire screen is submitted by users. Users can specify the number and names of Tabs, plus all the data captured within each Tab.
• Additional Data Display Options - Each screen within Zift PRM is related to a primary Entity (Person, Location, Opportunity etc.). The screen layout can now include any data fields from the primary entity, plus also read-only data/information stored in fields on other entities related to the primary entity e.g. details of the Partner Account Manager related to a Partner record, or details of the Products associated with an Opportunity.

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Standardized Zift PRM URLs

All new Zift PRM customers are now provided with the application and portal URLs in the following format:

customer_name.ziftprm.com

customer_name.portal.ziftprm.com

We continue to offer an installation service to manage re-directs from customer’s preferred
URLs (SSL Certificate to be provided by the customer).

Partner Portal Style Sheets

We have introduced customer-specific portal style sheets, that Zift admins and trained customer UI developers can modify. These style sheets overlay the styling of any part of the partner portal to suit customer branding requirements, without impacting the core Zift PRM web page styling. This innovation also speeds page loading
within the partner portal.

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Partner Manager

The Partner Manager Home Screen displays strategic details about Partner organizations as a
summary list. Each record can be expanded by clicking on the on the left edge of the table. This will display additional detail about the selected Partner.

Several controls are available:

• Add Account allows you to register a new Organization manually.
• Overview is the default view of the Partner Manager.
• Regions allows you to view data segmented geographically.

The small bar icons on the left edge of the list header allow you to modify the display using standard or compact layout. The list header also includes a count of records that match the current filters and the number of items that are displayed per page. This allows you to determine if all corresponding records are displayed. You can change how many records are displayed by using the drop-down selector. Finally, a search field allows you to define text that must appear in a Partner record. The search will return any records that include the text in any of the columns in the list.

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