My main use cases for StructuredWeb are twofold: one is for posting content for our reseller partners to consume and co-brand with, which is primarily for our larger reseller partners. For smaller reseller partners, they have that same use case, but they'll also run full-blown campaigns directly from StructuredWeb itself. For the larger partners, they have their own marketing platforms, whereas smaller partners leverage StructuredWeb's capabilities due to not having their own platform.
The most glaring benefit I've observed from using StructuredWeb for partner marketing is the ability to get out co-branded materials in a much faster fashion, which keeps our partners engaged. Before we launched this, our division was part of VMware, which had a partner marketing platform that didn't achieve near the utilization we're getting from StructuredWeb, even though VMware was a much larger company with more partners. This demonstrates that the platform is easy to use, quick to deploy, and more engaging for partners than our previous platform.
To improve the solution, I think the most important change would be expanding the number of files supported for import. One of the ongoing issues we've had is the platform's ability to consume content that we create and immediately make it available for partners to co-brand. These files come in various shapes and formats; some are easily consumed in StructuredWeb and uploaded, while others require breaking down into component parts and uploading piecemeal, which is the most broken process at StructuredWeb.
I have been using StructuredWeb in my career since May of 2024, so that's almost a year and a half.
Regarding stability, I haven't experienced any issues. We had one error message pop up for a user that we figured out eventually, but there has been no downtime to speak of.
I find StructuredWeb to be very scalable, as we have over 1,000 partner users who have logged into the system to date. It's extremely flexible, particularly because we're billed against active users each month, which makes sense for us. I haven't seen any issues as we continue to want to scale more and add new users every month.
I have not contacted technical support or customer support, but my employee who manages the platform has done so.
Before joining my company, I used E2open as the partner marketing platform at VMware, which was the main alternative I've utilized aside from StructuredWeb.
It took about three months to fully deploy StructuredWeb from start to finish. We started in early May and had it deployed by the first week of July.
The deployment required one main manager and one IT resource for about ten hours of work.
The pricing for StructuredWeb is not cheap; it's certainly one of the more expensive projects of its type within the company. However, it is cheaper than E2open used to be for VMware, which had a license for more users. I would say the pricing is a bit on the high side, not prohibitively so, but I wouldn't characterize it as a great value yet.
In comparing the two, I very much prefer StructuredWeb. The biggest differences are in engagement, ease of use for partners, and the ability for partners to utilize the platform as a tool for editing and co-branding. This capability was not available in E2open, which primarily served as a repository where the process for partners to co-brand was more reliant on them once they downloaded content. StructuredWeb provides a sandbox where partners can go in, update content, and co-brand on the fly.
It's fairly easy to implement StructuredWeb within my existing marketing processes, probably a seven or eight on a scale of 1 to 10.
Navigating through what they call the small journeys for setting up the marketing campaigns is more complicated; I'd rate that probably a five, as we're just starting some of that process now, and one of the reasons we haven't started until now is that it's quite complicated.
The complexity in navigating the setup hasn't affected the speed of launching marketing campaigns significantly; there are some internal processes that contribute. The biggest issue that affected our speed of launching was the content upload process, where certain formats are easy for StructuredWeb to upload, while others take more time and are more manual.
StructuredWeb is very focused on partner marketing and certainly competes as a best-of-breed solution. There are other platforms that have elements of what StructuredWeb offers, but from what I've seen, it's very high for a partner marketing-specific platform.
The effectiveness of the personalized content delivery in enhancing partner engagement is a very strong component; however, the only criticism we've received from partners is that sometimes our rules about what can be edited on the content are too restrictive for them. They would appreciate seeing us exercise more flexibility and less control. But that's an internal policy issue, not a problem with StructuredWeb.
Managing personalized content for different partners within StructuredWeb really comes down to partner size and resources. Larger partners typically use the platform to occasionally co-brand the content and then download it without extensive editing. In contrast, smaller partners, who may not have their own marketing platforms, engage in more extensive editing on the StructuredWeb platform and sometimes deploy from there and sometimes from their own platform.
We haven't really utilized the AI assistant for creating and distributing marketing content yet. There are two AI models: one internal and one external, where we haven't launched the external one available to our partners via the platform. The internal one has been experimented with, but due to turnover in staff, those initially trained are no longer with us, so we feel we're back to square one. Additionally, the AI component is somewhat tedious due to our AI council regulations within Imnissa, which has restricted us from using all capabilities from StructuredWeb. I would rate StructuredWeb an eight out of ten.
