Lenovo Partner Portal Gets Major Overhaul, Improves Experience

The Lenovo Partner Portal just got a major makeover. The newly launched Global Partner Hub now offers personalized and real-time sales tools, partner enablement and more.

It features a one-stop solution design that’s global and unifies Intelligent Devices Group (IDG) and Data Center Group (DCG) partners. Partner feedback signaled that a new portal was overdue.

Lenovo’s Rob Cato

“This is the next iteration of Lenovo’s commitment to our go-to-market strategy, which is absolutely through the North America channel,” Rob Cato, vice president, North America channel, Lenovo IDG. “It’s been a long time coming. We’ve spent several years getting ourselves to this point, lots of man hours, and invested millions of dollars to bring the Lenovo Partner Hub to fruition.”

The Lenovo Partner Hub, powered by advanced analytics, aims to take users to the next level of partner and customer experience.

Here are some features partners will find in the new Partner Hub.

• Improved visibility and enhanced product catalogues and co-marketing suggestions.
• More relevant solutions according to customer needs and history.
• Enriched content personalization based on a partner’s key responsibilities.
• Customer and solution-centric messaging.
• Intelligent pricing: streamlined and integrated pricing engine with deal registration and new customer bonus/acquisition bonus all in one place.
• Digital co-selling: digital marketing assets, partner-ready services, specialist programs and rewards.
• Digital processes: realizing efficiencies and speed of execution from opportunity, quotation, order and rewards.

More Features

Other feature designs increase productivity and speed up sales for partners. For example, the hub features instant pricing for SMBs and midmarket deals; accelerated turnaround of deal registration and new customer bonus/acquisition bonus requests; faster turnaround on rebate payment; a reduction in claim turnaround and increase in claim automation.

“One of the things that both partners and Lenovo are excited about is the ability for small and medium business customer opportunities to use the Lenovo Bid Portal. They can raise a deal registration or new customer opportunity and then leverage the Lenovo Bid Portal to submit a bid opportunity directly to Lenovo and get pricing back from Lenovo in a matter of minutes,” said Cato. “The speed to price across both our PCSD business and DCG business is a critical function, especially in the new world that I think we’re all headed to.”

The new hub design includes mobile access from a phone, laptop or tablet. So partners can access the full catalog of products.

“The product catalog is a marriage between several other separate tools in one integrated platform,” said Julie Wogelius, senior manager and global process owner, Lenovo Partner Hub.

Access to partner enablement and training is also on the new hub.

Lenovo’s Steve Biondi

“We have an opportunity as Lenovo to bring forward a platform on which partners can transact efficiently, safely and securely,” Steve Biondi, North America channel chief, Lenovo DCG, said in a news briefing.

The new DCG partner program launched on April 1, with the new chief, reinforcing Lenovo’s partner-first strategy.

The Hub debuts first across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and North America. Other locations, including Asia Pacific and Latin America, will follow in the coming months.