7 Questions To Ask An Oracle Eloqua Partner

So you’ve decided to make a big investment in your future marketing success and have chosen Oracle over the competition. First of all, let me say, I think you made an excellent choice. You’ve gone with the industry leader and have chosen the most flexible, powerful, robust solution on the market.

Now what?

First, you will need help with the implementation of the platform to get you set up for success. Once this is complete and you are ready to fly, you may require outside support for executing campaigns or managing your integrations. Down the road, you may look for help with running the platform when you have staff transition and need extra capacity; when you recognize there’s a skills gap on your team and you would rather contract out the work, or you might want to go with a fully managed service option. Whatever the business need is, you will want to make sure you thoroughly vet any potential partner you will hire. Having experienced the above scenarios as a customer, and now working for a company that solves for these business needs, here is my take on the questions you should be asking as you go through the winnowing process.

1) Are they certified?
You might wonder what this even means because people use the term “certified” differently. Let me try to shed some light on this. To become an official Oracle Certified partner, the entire company needs to meet certain standards. Oracle requires a minimum number of individuals in the organization to pass the Oracle certification exams in support, pre-sales, sales and implementation. When a company meets the threshold for certifications, they are allowed to call themselves a certified organization. The first question to ask a potential partner is “Are you a certified Oracle partner?” If they can’t answer that affirmatively, then you should look elsewhere.

The second part of this step is to ask about the specific consultant who will be leading your project. Just because a partner is certified by Oracle, does not necessarily mean the person working on your project is. For example, to be a certified Oracle partner, two people within the organization need to be implementation certified. Some partner organizations make sure two people maintain their certifications while the others are not required to pass the exams. You want to make sure the person leading your project is the best of the best. Ask any potential partner, “Will the consultant leading my project be certified as an Oracle Implementation Specialist?” If they can’t tell you, think hard about whom you want leading your project. Do you want to leave your important work in the hands of a novice?

2) Whom does Oracle recommend?
This one seems pretty straightforward, but I’m surprised at how few people think to ask Oracle whom they recommend. Oracle will provide you with top notch Account Managers and Success Coaches. They can help you figure out where you stand and what you need to do to make progress. If you get stuck, you will need some help. Ask your Account Manager or Success Coach who they recommend to help for your specific business needs. Their biggest incentive is to make sure you are happy, so they are going to lead you in the right direction. They might give you the names of two or three organizations that could do good work for you. There’s your starting point. They might only give you one name. If they do, really take that to heart. They know the partner landscape and who is known for what type of support, so the options they give you should make your priority selection list.

3) How deep is their knowledge base?
This is sometimes difficult to determine from a few phone calls and a slide deck. Some partner organizations have a wide variety of technology platforms they work with. Others focus on one or a few platforms in order to create a deep knowledge of the specific software they know. Depending on your needs, either approach could be valuable. Do you need someone who knows a little bit about everything, or a specialist who knows a handful of products extremely well? Once you determine which approach you prefer, ask questions to uncover which camp the partner falls in. Here are few examples: “How many marketing automation platforms does your organization support?” “Outside of marketing automation, do you consult on other software platforms as well?” “How much do you know about integration with my CRM and other technologies that our organization uses?”

4) Do they understand your industry and specific business?
Your business is unique, but some things are universal throughout your vertical. For example, if you are a school, your focus is probably on attracting new students. If you’re in the sports and entertainment vertical, you are concerned with selling season tickets and box seats. If you’re in manufacturing, you probably communicate with a lot of distributors. Make sure the partner you end up choosing really understands the needs of your industry and can talk intelligently about the sorts of things they’ve done to help similar organizations. If they aren’t speaking your language after ten minutes on the first call (students are not “prospects”, fans are not “leads”, distributors are not “MQL’s” and so-on-and-so-forth), be leery. They might not understand what you do, or didn’t even bother to check. That’s a problem.

5) Are they doing innovative things?
It’s one thing to be able to make campaigns. That’s something most of the partner organizations can do. But what else are they able to offer that will help get you to the next level? Make sure you find a partner who’s doing things that will help drive your business forward. For example: How are you dealing with all the data you are generating? Can your partner help with that? What if you need custom development? Can they handle that? Do they have resources to help with analytics? How can they help you prove return on the platform investment. Does your partner have expertise in all the complimentary products such as predictive scoring, video vendors, or content platforms? These are just some of the considerations to ask about. If you don’t feel confident that your partner can handle these types of things, steer clear. They are not going to help you grow and advance. Who wants to pay a bunch of money to remain stagnant?

6) Are they transparent?
This question seems like it should be obvious to me, but for some organizations it’s sadly not. If your partner cannot be specific about how you will be billed, what terms and agreements are in place, and what your time was spent on, proceed with caution. You should know exactly what you are spending your money on, and your partner should gladly give you a detailed account of what the money is being spent on. If they won’t or say they cannot, it’s an issue. It’s that simple.

7) Do you like them?
No brainer. You are going to be spending a lot of time communicating with your consultants, account managers, sales reps, and maybe an executive sponsor. You should probably like your partner team. If you really don’t like the people you are working with, find someone else to help. There’s no sense paying good money to work with people that make your job more difficult. Make sure the people doing work on behalf of your organization are the sort of people you would like to have in your office every day.

Choosing a partner to help with your marketing automation efforts is a critical process and should not be approached frivolously. If you do it right, you will create a long-standing relationship with a resource that can help dramatically improve your marketing efforts. Get the wrong partner in there, and you could be headed down a path to perpetual headaches. Hopefully, this post will help you to chose the right one.

If you are searching for a partner to help you with your marketing efforts, or are frustrated with your current one, we would love the chance to earn your business. Contact us, and we will set up a time to discuss the issues you’re encountering and figure out how to move through them.