EDITOR’S QUESTION
How channel partners can
leverage ManageEngine’s PitStop
An organically built community of knowledge sharing is ideal for channel partners to
leverage and showcase their skills explains Vidya Vasu at ManageEngine.
A
s an enterprise vendor describe
how channel partners can engage
and leverage your community to cross
sell and position themselves.
T
he single biggest purpose of
community is to bring together
people with similar interests and
provide a sense of belonging. Typically, IT
communities foster a culture where members
learn, connect with their peers, and feel
encouraged to engage with each other.
Businesses build communities to further
collective actions and provide solutions to
issues commonly faced by most members,
which is done through the ManageEngine
PitStop community.
“With shared resources, members do not
need to reinvent the wheel,” says Vidya Vasu,
Head of ManageEngine Community.
The best part of the community is not
everyone is expected to contribute from the
start. The contributions often start as silent or
mute engagements. Users get on board, lurk
around discussions, go through the other forum
topics, and try to implement the tips and tricks
shared by their peers. Overtime, members begin
with comments or by acknowledging a fellow
user’s comment; eventually they go on to share
their own expertise. Some of the regular users
even start to engage among themselves and
form virtual groups.
Product experts, community managers,
partners, and experienced users reply to
technical questions and other queries. Many
Vidya Vasu is Head of
ManageEngine Community
users are happy to help their peers with
answers, tips, and work arounds. Product-
specific announcements, other generic
domain-specific announcements, tips, and
best practices are posted periodically.
“ManageEngine PitStop is accessible to our
channel partners. In fact, the best technical
contacts from our partner companies are
active contributors and participants in our
community,” explains Vidya.
The resources shared on the community
are relevant to users and partners alike.
Contributing to the community helps build
partners’ credibility among prospects and
users from their region. It also helps eliminate
language barriers for non-English users. As
important product announcements spread
through the community, partners stay on top
of things and help users with all the news and
updates from ManageEngine.
An engaged community translates to higher
retention and revenue, which is a direct benefit
for partners. The community is a tool that
partners can leverage to boost user retention,
increase upsell, distribute support load, and
follow announcements. The credibility and
transparency of the community is bolstered by
the engagement of channel partners.
For users, customers and prospects, the
biggest benefits are peer support, readily
available resources, and a transparent
medium of communication. Customers
benefit from the collective validations their
peers provide as in the case of an upgrade
or a new feature release. This eliminates the
psychological barrier they might have with
respect to making decisions, and reduces
time-to-deploy.
“I am sure that very often we have all come
across users who, despite being unhappy with
a product, stay loyal to the brand because they
appreciate the ease of dealing with the people
behind the brand. Communities forge that
special connection between peers, between
the vendor and users, and are mutually
beneficial for both in the long term.”
A community encourages an ecosystem
where ideas are as forthcoming as the
general queries. ManageEngine PitStop is
no different. Users share a lot of ideas and
request features or changes. It is not practical
to accommodate all user requirements in
the products. “We have to take the middle
path and consider feature requests that are
more relevant to the larger user community
and proceed based on feasibility,” is how
ManageEngine actions the feedback.
Most ManageEngine products have
provisions to achieve specific requirements,
that are not available in the product out of the
box, using scripts, and the community acts as
a platform where members get to showcase
their scripting expertise.
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