Samsung today announced enhancements to its Ascend Partner Portal—the company’s ‘one-stop-shop’ for channel partners to access essential Samsung sales programs and partner resources. The portal has been revamped with new innovations that improve user experience and sales expertise including: personalized viewing options, automated marketing capabilities, and a greater focus on partner rewards and incentives.
Samsung has regularly updated the Ascend Partner Portal based on feedback from its Partner Advisory Board, which led to an 85 percent increase in registered users since the portal came online¹. Key feedback included a request to provide a single source for all necessary materials in order to simplify the ease of doing business with Samsung.
“Samsung is at the forefront of sales innovation, and our evolved portal reflects this with new capabilities that help B2B partners create more opportunities to drive growth,” said John Curtis, Vice President and Head of Mobile B2B, Samsung Electronics America. “By taking feedback from our channel partner community, we’ve developed a portal that prioritizes partner needs, while helping them succeed at selling in a digital-first world.”
The Ascend Partner Portal’s new enhancements focus on boosting partner experience and productivity. These include:
- Personalized Customer Interface: Samsung now tailors information specific to each visiting partner, with separate interfaces dedicated to partners selling solutions for Mobile, Display, or both. Users can easily view content that’s specific to their product focus, such as datasheets, brochures and sales presentations, enabling partners to gain faster access to the resources they need to increase business opportunities.
- Automated Marketing Engine: Ascend houses co-branded assets, social media posts and customizable marketing campaigns that are ready-to-use for all partners. Now, instead of re-creating materials, resellers have access to a one-stop-shop of ‘plug-and-play’ marketing assets to help expedite the process and ensure partners are delivering a consistent message to customers. As a result, partners reduce time spent creating and circulating marketing content for each campaign, and instead have a streamlined way to accelerate demand for custom-tailored solutions.
- New Loyalty Points Program: Going beyond standard SPIF rewards, a new points program encourages partners to take action on the site, such as submitting a deal registration, completing a training certification or launching a marketing campaign. To track all of this, sales leaders have access to advanced reporting capabilities so they can review team performance including training certifications, deals registered, opportunities, and more.
“Samsung’s partners are essential in supplying our customers with solutions that accelerate a return to work for so many industries,” said Chris Mertens, Vice President, Sales, Display Division at Samsung Electronics America. “Following the launch of the Ascend portal last year, we looked at ways to improve upon the platform to make it even easier for our partners to do business with Samsung. The new developments will allow members to customize their user experience and discover more opportunities to better serve customers.”
Samsung Partners on Ascend
A Samsung partner who uses the Ascend partner portal to advance business is Denali Advanced Integration, a global leader in delivering integrated technology solutions and services based in Redmond, WA. According to Bill Barry, EVP Global Sales & Alliances at Denali: “We work closely with Samsung to help enterprises activate, deploy and manage Samsung’s mobile technology, and we are excited to see their Ascend portal take user experience and partner resources to the next level. Samsung continually seeks new ways to drive channel innovation for their partner community, and Denali looks forward to using these latest enhancements to grow business.”
Another partner conducting business with Ascend is GHA Technologies, Inc. “GHA Technologies, Inc. has been using the Ascend Partner Portal for over a year now and it’s been extremely helpful for our sales teams,” said George Hertzberg, Owner, GHA Technologies. “They can quickly gain access to Samsung Display related content and training, but more importantly, use the portal to submit special pricing and project registration requests. The Samsung Ascend team responds to our inquiries in a timely manner, helping us move our opportunities along faster.”
Samsung continues to look for new opportunities to progress its offerings so it can continue to meet the shifting needs of its partners. The enhanced Ascend portal provides an improved partner experience that encourages partners to discover more opportunities and drive sales.
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[1] Based on Samsung research beginning July 2019
