VentureBeat News recently reported a study that said “many organizations are underestimating the resources that are required” to effectively implement their marketing automation technologies. Eloqua experts are being promoted quickly and are otherwise in demand, and at the same time, we’re hearing that some companies are having trouble hiring trained Eloqua resources.

Even in a good hiring environment, it can take two to three months to hire someone, and another several months for them to become acclimated to your organization. Does that mean you need to put your marketing operations on hold for six months? 

For those companies that seem to be short-handed in trained Eloqua people, we have a suggestion: consider hiring an Eloqua partner to help you through those periods when you find yourself short-handed.

A partner can help you in many ways. They can certainly help you with “the big things”: to effectively implement Eloqua, to help you to ramp up quickly, to generate value very quickly, and to maintain efficient levels of operation as organizations move through periods of rapid change or expansion.

But a partner organization can also help you with your “day-to-day” campaigns. They can dedicate one or several human beings to your organization for portions of a week. These are experienced partner resources, who are deeply knowledgeable about Eloqua, who can work with you and your organization to perfectly fill the gap that you’re experiencing.

Here are five reasons why your organization will benefit from working with an Eloqua partner:

1. Multi-faceted expertise: The partner organization you choose will have expertise that a new employee wouldn’t have – even if you’re advertising for a person with expertise! The kind of multi-faceted experience that a partner can bring into an organization will frequently far exceed what a single experienced person can do. Beyond that, individuals within partner organizations can quickly gain access to information they didn’t even have – by a quick IM to a co-worker, or even by leaning over into the next cubicle!
2. You’ll get a lot of work done quickly: While a company may only have one position opening, a partner relationship can frequently bring many people to bear on a problem, solving it quickly and efficiently. Their ability to work well together can speed a marketing organization quickly over a number of hurdles.
3. Peace of mind: A partner’s reputation, experience, and the quality and timeliness of their work, can give you the kind of peace of mind that can’t be gotten when trying out a new hire – no matter what that person’s reputation may have been while transitioning into the company. 
4. “Informal” training for your whole department: Exposure to the marketing automation experts at a partner organization can provide useful opportunities for “informal” kinds of training for other people in your organization – the kind of training that can only be gleaned from “real life”, not from textbooks or classroom training.
5.  Broad perspective on what can be done with Eloqua: When you hire somebody, even if they are Eloqua experienced, they probably will only have worked with 1-2 other companies on Eloqua. A partner team member typically has worked with dozens of companies or more, giving them a much broader campaign experience base.

Working with a partner organization can give you access to new ideas, new insights at every level, from creative to technological. From subscription list approaches to different approaches to subject lines, a partner resource will have seen a lot!

By having a technology-savvy partner in place, whom you can call upon at will, companies new to marketing automation can give inexperienced users the kind of breathing room they need to make certain the system is working properly while getting important projects completed.

At the same time, partners give new users opportunities for hands-on experience (and interaction with more experienced users) that can help them to become much more proficient, and much more profitable, much more quickly.

You may even like working with your partner so well, that you’ll consider it a permanent solution!

For more information visit www.4ThoughtMarketing.com, or call 1-888-ELOQUA4 (888-356-7824) or email [email protected]