The best and the worst vendor partner portals

HP, Microsoft, Dell, Cisco - whose partner portal portal is a nightmare and whose is a dream?

Editor's note: As part of our special editorial partnership, CRN is publishing this recent article from Channelnomics in the US.

For channel partners looking for organic lead generation, your best and worst bet may be your leading vendors' locator portals. As many major vendors run global channels, customers often choose to skip the search engine and skim a list of partners in their area. But how do your vendors' portals stack up? Channelnomics subjectively rated some of the most popular partner portals on a scale of one (worst) to five (best) based on design, ease of use, relevance of search criteria and usefulness of the results.

Take note - because a lousy Web portal that's unintuitive or offers limited partner results could be turning away frustrated visitors. Unfortunately, that reflects poorly on both the vendor and the partner, as well. Here's what we found, in order from worst to best, including five partner finders rated as "excellent."