Microsoft Pinpoint Launches in Beta
Microsoft this week launched the U.S. beta of
Microsoft
Pinpoint, a new online business marketplace for connecting customers with
partners. Previously codenamed "Hitch," the site is the next iteration
of the Solution Finder.
According to Todd Weatherby, a general manager in the Worldwide Partner Group,
the company's goals with Pinpoint are to make it easier for customers to find
reputable partners. New capabilities include giving customers the opportunity
to leave ratings and reviews of partner solutions -- kind of an informal and
public way of reinforcing the company's ongoing push for customer satisfaction
data on partners.
"We're going to watch and see how that goes," Weatherby said.
For the moment, partners will enter their solutions in the existing Solution
Profiler, which will populate both the current Solution Finder and Pinpoint.
Eventually, Weatherby said, everything will shift to Pinpoint, which will be
accessible to customers from www.microsoft.com
and at pinpoint.microsoft.com.
Microsoft reached out to help more than 1,000 partners tune their entries to
make sure Pinpoint had a solid launch. But with 274,000 partners in Microsoft
directories, optimizing for Pinpoint will be a self-service process for the
overwhelming majority of companies.
Pinpoint will roll out internationally in calendar year 2009.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 09, 2008