March 18, 2019
Data collection, analysis, and management prove key to keeping partners happy and boosting profitability.
By Chanan Greenberg, senior vice president and general manager of High Tech at Model N
As the bread and butter of most high-tech companies, channel sales typically represent 70 percent of an organization’s revenue. Yet companies often fail to manage their channel business with the same level of care and attention as they do their direct business.
As companies seek to design innovative and effective channel programs, they often do so without the data and tools needed to ensure the programs will be successful. This results in programs that deviate from a company’s overall sales strategy and miss the mark on what customers want. What’s more, this ad hoc approach results in a high level of manual oversight and mismanagement. This all-too-common scenario has the unintended consequence of expending valuable resources without actually giving channel customers what they need.
Given channel sales’ impact on top- and bottom-line revenue, companies should make optimizing their channel programs a priority. Modern systems and tools can leverage the power of channel data while intelligently managing channel programs and responding to customers’ needs. Improving channel programs is a never-ending battle. Here are five ways you can modernize your approach and ensure a better channel program.
Get the Data You Need – Now
If your company is waiting longer than a few days for partner data, it can’t manage its channel business in real time. Without timely data, you can’t engage proactively with partners or identify and address problems, and that puts you at risk of missing opportunities for growth. On the other hand, companies with real-time channel data can respond to partner issues quickly, monitor market trends, and track sales forecasts and revenue goals.
Use High-Quality Data
According to Forrester’s 2015 Global Business Technographics Marketing Survey, channel marketers rank managing data quality as one of their biggest challenges. Despite all of the advances in technology and options available for companies to streamline their operations, many still rely on manual processes to manage their channel business. Not only are manual processes slow, but they’re also more error-prone and hindered by a lack of expertise required to create necessary tools and processes. By using modern automation and standardization technologies, you can be sure that you’re using reliable, high-quality channel data.
Reward Partners and Protect Profitability
It might be hard to wrap your head around the idea of general data quality in the abstract, but it becomes all too real when partners increasingly question rebates and payouts. When partners feel the need to “audit” your channel program, you lose valuable selling time, the trust between you and partners breaks down, and there’s a great deal of frustration on both sides. On the other hand, for a large company with millions of dollars in annual channel revenue, inaccurate or incomplete sales data can easily add up to a seven-figure expense in the form of overpayments to partners.
A modern channel data solution can address this problem by automating data collection, providing clean and complete channel data, and ensuring on-time partner payouts. In a true win-win scenario, you can reward high-performing partners while protecting the bottom line and maximizing profitability.
Unlock Secrets to Success with Data Analytics
Data is only as good as your ability to understand it. A modern channel management solution unlocks data through customizable business analytics. This data provides valuable insight into channel operational performance, timeliness of data delivery from partners, data error rates, and more. Armed with these metrics, companies can more easily employ corrective measures. Also, they’re better equipped to implement effective sales and marketing incentive programs while achieving greater levels of success with channel partners.
Tie Together Channel Programs and Revenue Management
A key way to maximize the value of the channel is to consider how channel programs and revenue data interact with your revenue-management processes. Companies can utilize modern solutions that integrate channel program data with revenue management systems, sharing data with downstream applications automatically. This type of seamless integration can offer improved rebate tracking, partner compliance, and, ultimately, payments against the rebates.
The benefits of modern channel program tools are evident. Companies will enjoy high quality, real-time, comprehensive data, which can then be analyzed and interpreted to help improve business decisions. Well-managed and well-understood channel programs and the data they produce will unlock opportunities for improved management of channel partners and increased success for you and your channel.
