The Challenge
The IBM Co-Marketing program provides eligible IBM Business Partners with funding and resources to drive marketplace demand. Their online portal called “IBM PartnerWorld Co-Marketing” offers tailored solutions and resource access to different types of partner users, depending on their specific needs and roles.
Idea Theorem™ was tasked with reimagining the user experience of their complex portal product, which had multiple personas and several workflows involved. The objective was to create a personalized user experience for each individual persona.
Our Approach
We began by understanding each persona, their key tasks, and their pain points. We focused on creating a personalized dashboard for each type of user, so they can focus only on tasks that are important to them.
The Dashboard became the primary source of information for each of the persona and enabled actions such as "Approve" or "Reject" which saved effort and time for the user and their teams. Once we understood the essential functions of the main dashboard and corresponding portal, we next established the look of the project pages following IBM’s detailed Carbon Design System.
We next outlined the many different windows and available resources that would be needed for a number of tasks by several different user personas. This included actions such as submitting a claim, managing incentive offerings, submitting a marketing activity plan, and more.
This system allows authorized users to submit and get approval for the various co-marketing actions they offer their partners. Once these parameters were defined and approved, we worked with IBM’s team of designers and developers to implement our suggestions and deploy the new changes to their partner portal.
Process Workflow
The Portal was designed to facilitate a specific workflow (detailed below /or above depending on how you place it). The workflow was split into four significant Phases, with different Portal Users responsible for facilitating each step within the Phase. Ensuring smooth facilitation of this workflow is the primary function of the Portal.
The Outcome
IBM’s Co-Marketing Portal aims to help Business Partners with their marketing resources, assets, and funding to drive demand and revenue. Idea Theorem ™ helped create a clean and straightforward user dashboard for several job roles and personas, creating an individualized experience for each user type. Beyond that, we streamlined the process and design of the internal portal windows so that they are easy to use regardless of who the user is and what they are trying to accomplish.
