Vendor management - there are tools to help you

A big problem today for partners and resellers is cost effectively managing their vendor relationships. Vendor relationship management is not a common software term and most software companies are not overtly offering tools for this. You need to be creative. But still, many companies today struggle with keeping track of all of their vendor relationships and interactions. Companies today tend to resell Microsoft, Adobe, HP, Sun, and other offerings. It is difficult to keep track of who you are working with and what you are working on.

Here are some examples of things you are probably struggling with:

-Profiling (lists and segmentation)
-Vendor recruitment and registration
-marketing planning and marketing collaboration
-joint campaigns and funding for campaigns
-soft funds management/prior approvals and collaborative marketing
-portal for vendors
-Dashboard for performance metrics
-notifications and emails
-vendor employee profiling

One tool that is alright at solving some of these problems is the one offered by Net Suite. The product is called NetSuite Small Business. It offers PURCHASING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT FEATURES like
Requisitions, Purchase Orders, and vender centric information/profile views. Here is a link to the product information:

http://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/nsb/purchasing

Next I'm going to evaluate Microsoft's small business solution and kickbacks. I know that www.salesforce.com does not offer a solution for this as they are just a pipeline management and contact management too.

Watch for further journal entries on this topic. Reseller Central.