Common Mistakes

1. Failing to understand the real information needs of your partners. It is easy to go into a rosy glow and make a lot of false assumptions. Generations of corporate brochure writers were able to get away with this as they had no way of monitoring readership levels. The web swiftly disabuses the complacent!

2. Underestimating what you will need to do to pull people into the site. As one manager put it: "There are a few sad gits who have nothing better to do with their lives than browse your site. Most need to be chivvied." How many visitors you get will also depend on your commercial importance to your partners.

3. Failing to get management buy in. A full-blown PRM solution will change the way everyone - from sales administrators to sales directors - do their jobs.

4. Underestimating the effort it will take to maintain a live site. Will you really update the information?

5. Trying to integrate your PRM site with the wider end-user site. Interestingly, Oracle has now completely separated its PRM site from its end-user sites. Partners find it much easier to find the data they need on a dedicated partner site.

6. Making false assumptions about how your company really handles sales and marketing. One manager said: "The trouble with leads handling systems is that I have never worked for a supplier who genuinely handed over qualified leads to its partners. They all keep them for themselves." If this is true of your company, then a leads handling system is not going to work!

7. Be cautious of making sweeping changes. Forrester at BMW says: "Your site is judged on the latest initiaitive. If people feel it is irrelevant, and has wasted their time, they switch off." BMW always tries out ideas on a small guinea pig audience beforehand.