I would like to see more features for tracking training progress and quizzes. The progress report that Allbound generates isn't very helpful. I want to track how much a user has completed and who has or hasn't restarted. We are using a third-party platform for training purposes, especially enablement purposes. The progress reports and analytics are very powerful, and we'd like to see something along those lines. Allbound has certification, but it's missing some things from a certification point of view that are available in other products.
We would like to utilize partner automation more, but there is some troubleshooting and programming that needs to happen in the middleware to enable this. This is the feature we are most looking forward to, and we hope that it will be prioritized on the roadmap. We would like more options within Allbound's learning tracks, and either more complexity in integrating with MLS or a minimal MLS option.
They could add an LMS component to the platform where we would have courses through Allbound and a record of whether partners pass or don't pass. The quiz feature would come in more handy at that point. It could also be more attractive. It looks like the back end of a website. Someone actually posted on LinkedIn about how bad-looking the platform is and how bad our portal looks. It's pretty embarrassing for our company.
Allbound is missing a few features. For example, we would like the ability to track the training courses each user completed. We also want more powerful reporting and analytics. Some of them may already be in their product roadmap. More automation would also be helpful. Allbound automatically sends notifications when a new user logs in or receives mail, but we want to automate content uploading because that is time-consuming. We have to prepare the image that everyone will see at the top. These tasks take a little bit of time.
Allbound could have more localization and customization. The templates work well, and maybe they don't want to target large enterprises by design. The solution is geared toward small and medium-sized enterprises, but they could allow more localization and deeper customization. Allbound is broad, but it could be deeper.
Senior Channel Marketing Manager at Absolute Software
Real User
Top 20
2023-02-28T01:59:00Z
Feb 28, 2023
I'm not a fan of Allbound's UI for administrators. For example, there are some issues with the report-building tool, and when I'm building a report, it's not always clear what the outcome will be. There are a lot of radio buttons, rather than filtering or being able to select from a list. It's an accordion layout, so I click on one option, and it expands to reveal a radio button selection, which means I can't always choose everything I want. Checkboxes or selecting multiple options from a list is an improvement. Additionally, the report output looks very dated, so the interface needs some love. The UI is somewhat clunky and unattractive. It's relatively straightforward to use, but the looks need updating. The interface around re-branding collateral could also be improved; placing items such as logos and text boxes is awkward, so it's hard to ensure they're well-placed. As a result, we see little engagement with the re-branding feature by our partners. The ability to re-brand white-label collateral has not affected the time we spend on partner administration. When scrolling through the interface, it's not entirely obvious which items are co-brandable; there's a little green triangle in the corner of the preview that says ''co-brand'', so it doesn't catch the eye. There's no way to filter specifically by co-brandable material, so the feature requires a lot of handholding and education to get our partners to use it. We can filter by type of collateral but not specifically by co-brandable documents, so we either need to click through page by page or know the exact name of the document we're looking for.
I like that Allbound is constantly improving. A recommendation I would make to them is to improve their communication because I don't always get notice of improvements. I know that they're communicating, but for some reason, it has been difficult to get the updates. They are doing a better job. They're starting to use the portal to say, "Hey, we have this new feature available." I would like them to keep innovating and certainly at the pace that they're at, and maybe even a little bit quicker. Also, filtering or customizing the content that different partners see could be done better. I know how to work within the confines of the system, but I think there's an opportunity for them there. However, I also understand that there are probably some things I could do within the Partner Journey Automation that I just haven't tapped into yet. My advice to them is to make the co-branding piece easier. Allbound does make it easy not only for the administrator program, but also for partners, to interact. So if they can make the co-branding piece a little more robust, that would help. What I could do within Impartner was see a logo, where it was going, and know exactly where I was at in content. It did make it easier for partners to add content at certain spots in a piece of collateral. It could be that I just don't know Allbound well enough and that it does all of this, but it felt like it was easier to do in Impartner. One thing I would love to see is that when I make an update, it would show in my own time zone. I think that they're starting to do that now. We've actually gone back to Allbound and said, "Hey, we would love it if you did this," and then, three or four months later, we see it. That's awesome.
On the design side, there could be some more updates to make it look a little bit more modern. We right now use the classic dashboard, but we're switching to the minimal dashboard that's available to try and make the UI look a little bit prettier for our partners. In the design area, there could definitely be some improvements that partners would appreciate.
The partner finder on the website is not as good as it could be. For example, someone finds a partner on our website, and they push to learn more, but there is no connection to the Allbound or deal registration process. This makes it difficult to capture that information. I am currently working on fixing this issue. Allbound supports a few frameworks, but not necessarily the ones we use internally. We use an app called Workato as our primary integration layer for the company. There are ways to connect, but it's not an out-of-the-box connector with robust documentation. The solution requires a little bit more work that can easily be done, but, it requires more knowledge and heavier lifting. Their deeper API and integration framework makes it easier for us to build deeper integrations, but the connectors aren't as robust as we would like.
People are not able to deactivate members themselves. If someone leaves the organization, partners would like to do it themselves, but currently, they have to ask us. With the partner plan, there is not a lot that could be improved, but it would be easiest and the best if we could make the integrations ourselves. For example, for integration with our CRM, we need an integration specialist. If we are somehow able to do that ourselves, it would save the time of Allbound and us. In terms of the additional features, we don't need any at this time.
It's easy to assign the content according to groups, but it would be nice if they had a bulk operation around that. Currently, we need to do that manually for every content. They need to improve its reporting capabilities. They don't have all the possibilities to drill down in reporting. Some of the enhancements are from the user management perspective, and they're working on improving and developing that. Currently, if I want to change something from the user perspective, I need to get that one by one. I cannot see which user did which operation and what was their role, and I need to create a specific case to define specific roles in order to define the specific content that I want to expose to them. For example, I'm a tech manager, but there is also a sales manager. They don't have the flexibility to define different role types for managers, such as sales manager and tech manager. From their perspective, they're the same user roles. So, we need to create them to support that. So, user management is something that they need to improve. Currently, it lacks the flexibility to do the customization, and for many of the required fields or many of our needs, we need to contact the product managers. They're working on supporting that in the future or the next release. They have a good roadmap. If they can't make the fixes today, they work to do that in the next release. It's a good motivation to continue working with Allbound and not move to other vendors or competitors. Another improvement is about better, greater support for specific packages. Some of the packages cost more but have very few features. They aren't worth the money. For example, MDF has the highest cost, and sometimes, for one or two features, it isn't worth paying so much. I would like to have this kind of capability in a better package instead of the highest one with which you get only one, two, or three more features. Another improvement area is the prospect page. You have the number of views. You can see how many customers viewed the pages from the prospect or the template prospect that you created, but you don't have the possibility to see if it was viewed by a partner or an end customer. You don't know who looked at the documentation or the page that you created for this opportunity. I have raised a request to have this basic feature.
Allbound’s partner-centric technology is driving the future of channel success. The company’s partner relationship management (PRM) platform is a powerful solution focused on the partner life cycle from onboarding, training, enablement, and pipeline management that together enable businesses to put partners first.
I would like to see more features for tracking training progress and quizzes. The progress report that Allbound generates isn't very helpful. I want to track how much a user has completed and who has or hasn't restarted. We are using a third-party platform for training purposes, especially enablement purposes. The progress reports and analytics are very powerful, and we'd like to see something along those lines. Allbound has certification, but it's missing some things from a certification point of view that are available in other products.
We would like to utilize partner automation more, but there is some troubleshooting and programming that needs to happen in the middleware to enable this. This is the feature we are most looking forward to, and we hope that it will be prioritized on the roadmap. We would like more options within Allbound's learning tracks, and either more complexity in integrating with MLS or a minimal MLS option.
They could add an LMS component to the platform where we would have courses through Allbound and a record of whether partners pass or don't pass. The quiz feature would come in more handy at that point. It could also be more attractive. It looks like the back end of a website. Someone actually posted on LinkedIn about how bad-looking the platform is and how bad our portal looks. It's pretty embarrassing for our company.
Allbound is missing a few features. For example, we would like the ability to track the training courses each user completed. We also want more powerful reporting and analytics. Some of them may already be in their product roadmap. More automation would also be helpful. Allbound automatically sends notifications when a new user logs in or receives mail, but we want to automate content uploading because that is time-consuming. We have to prepare the image that everyone will see at the top. These tasks take a little bit of time.
Allbound could have more localization and customization. The templates work well, and maybe they don't want to target large enterprises by design. The solution is geared toward small and medium-sized enterprises, but they could allow more localization and deeper customization. Allbound is broad, but it could be deeper.
I'm not a fan of Allbound's UI for administrators. For example, there are some issues with the report-building tool, and when I'm building a report, it's not always clear what the outcome will be. There are a lot of radio buttons, rather than filtering or being able to select from a list. It's an accordion layout, so I click on one option, and it expands to reveal a radio button selection, which means I can't always choose everything I want. Checkboxes or selecting multiple options from a list is an improvement. Additionally, the report output looks very dated, so the interface needs some love. The UI is somewhat clunky and unattractive. It's relatively straightforward to use, but the looks need updating. The interface around re-branding collateral could also be improved; placing items such as logos and text boxes is awkward, so it's hard to ensure they're well-placed. As a result, we see little engagement with the re-branding feature by our partners. The ability to re-brand white-label collateral has not affected the time we spend on partner administration. When scrolling through the interface, it's not entirely obvious which items are co-brandable; there's a little green triangle in the corner of the preview that says ''co-brand'', so it doesn't catch the eye. There's no way to filter specifically by co-brandable material, so the feature requires a lot of handholding and education to get our partners to use it. We can filter by type of collateral but not specifically by co-brandable documents, so we either need to click through page by page or know the exact name of the document we're looking for.
I like that Allbound is constantly improving. A recommendation I would make to them is to improve their communication because I don't always get notice of improvements. I know that they're communicating, but for some reason, it has been difficult to get the updates. They are doing a better job. They're starting to use the portal to say, "Hey, we have this new feature available." I would like them to keep innovating and certainly at the pace that they're at, and maybe even a little bit quicker. Also, filtering or customizing the content that different partners see could be done better. I know how to work within the confines of the system, but I think there's an opportunity for them there. However, I also understand that there are probably some things I could do within the Partner Journey Automation that I just haven't tapped into yet. My advice to them is to make the co-branding piece easier. Allbound does make it easy not only for the administrator program, but also for partners, to interact. So if they can make the co-branding piece a little more robust, that would help. What I could do within Impartner was see a logo, where it was going, and know exactly where I was at in content. It did make it easier for partners to add content at certain spots in a piece of collateral. It could be that I just don't know Allbound well enough and that it does all of this, but it felt like it was easier to do in Impartner. One thing I would love to see is that when I make an update, it would show in my own time zone. I think that they're starting to do that now. We've actually gone back to Allbound and said, "Hey, we would love it if you did this," and then, three or four months later, we see it. That's awesome.
On the design side, there could be some more updates to make it look a little bit more modern. We right now use the classic dashboard, but we're switching to the minimal dashboard that's available to try and make the UI look a little bit prettier for our partners. In the design area, there could definitely be some improvements that partners would appreciate.
The partner finder on the website is not as good as it could be. For example, someone finds a partner on our website, and they push to learn more, but there is no connection to the Allbound or deal registration process. This makes it difficult to capture that information. I am currently working on fixing this issue. Allbound supports a few frameworks, but not necessarily the ones we use internally. We use an app called Workato as our primary integration layer for the company. There are ways to connect, but it's not an out-of-the-box connector with robust documentation. The solution requires a little bit more work that can easily be done, but, it requires more knowledge and heavier lifting. Their deeper API and integration framework makes it easier for us to build deeper integrations, but the connectors aren't as robust as we would like.
People are not able to deactivate members themselves. If someone leaves the organization, partners would like to do it themselves, but currently, they have to ask us. With the partner plan, there is not a lot that could be improved, but it would be easiest and the best if we could make the integrations ourselves. For example, for integration with our CRM, we need an integration specialist. If we are somehow able to do that ourselves, it would save the time of Allbound and us. In terms of the additional features, we don't need any at this time.
It's easy to assign the content according to groups, but it would be nice if they had a bulk operation around that. Currently, we need to do that manually for every content. They need to improve its reporting capabilities. They don't have all the possibilities to drill down in reporting. Some of the enhancements are from the user management perspective, and they're working on improving and developing that. Currently, if I want to change something from the user perspective, I need to get that one by one. I cannot see which user did which operation and what was their role, and I need to create a specific case to define specific roles in order to define the specific content that I want to expose to them. For example, I'm a tech manager, but there is also a sales manager. They don't have the flexibility to define different role types for managers, such as sales manager and tech manager. From their perspective, they're the same user roles. So, we need to create them to support that. So, user management is something that they need to improve. Currently, it lacks the flexibility to do the customization, and for many of the required fields or many of our needs, we need to contact the product managers. They're working on supporting that in the future or the next release. They have a good roadmap. If they can't make the fixes today, they work to do that in the next release. It's a good motivation to continue working with Allbound and not move to other vendors or competitors. Another improvement is about better, greater support for specific packages. Some of the packages cost more but have very few features. They aren't worth the money. For example, MDF has the highest cost, and sometimes, for one or two features, it isn't worth paying so much. I would like to have this kind of capability in a better package instead of the highest one with which you get only one, two, or three more features. Another improvement area is the prospect page. You have the number of views. You can see how many customers viewed the pages from the prospect or the template prospect that you created, but you don't have the possibility to see if it was viewed by a partner or an end customer. You don't know who looked at the documentation or the page that you created for this opportunity. I have raised a request to have this basic feature.