Challenge
A B2B referral network connected 1,400+ partners (consultants, agencies, integrators) with the enterprise vendors they referred customers to. The legacy platform had one user role and a flat data model — every partner saw every deal, attribution was a manual chase, and onboarding a new partner meant a week of back-and-forth before they could see their first referral. The network was growing past what the legacy system could support.
Approach
Discovery focused on the role taxonomy and the attribution model — these were the load-bearing decisions. We worked through 14 distinct partner and vendor personas and landed on a role and scope model that covered them all without exception logic. The build was phased: identity and access first, then referral submission and attribution, then reporting and payouts.
What we built
A multi-tenant partner platform on Next.js with a fine-grained role and scope model — partners see only their referrals, vendors see only their inbound, channel managers see what they should. Referral submission integrated with the CRM each vendor uses (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive). Automated attribution with a dispute workflow for the edge cases. Payouts handled through Stripe Connect with proper tax reporting.
Results
Partner onboarding moved from weeks to days as the platform supported self-serve setup with light review. Attribution disputes dropped 78% because the data lived in one place and the audit trail was clean. The platform now hosts 1,400+ active partners and several hundred vendors. Referral cycle time dropped 41% — partners get faster status, vendors get cleaner data.