By Jim Holland, Sr. Product Marketing Manager
Imagine it’s Monday morning and your CEO has a complete view into global channel sales from the prior week. Sales and marketing leadership has it too. With this information, your teams know exactly what partners are selling in London, have a real-time view into the recent product launch in California, and what partners are under-performing in South America. Is this possible or fabricated utopia?
In his recent post, Jay McBain, Principal Analyst, Channel Partnerships & Alliances at Forrester shared, “Our research found that the effective use of real-time channel data improves a vendor’s speed-to-market, provides actionable insights for making in-flight adjustments, develops a new level of location intelligence to better understand their customers, opens up data accessibility to reduce payment errors, and helps quantify the return on invested capital (ROIC) in the channel.”
Jay continues, “Channel data has historically been very siloed, with dozens of different systems reporting in a disconnected fashion. The organization is also siloed, with our research revealing that only 43% of channel marketers report into the marketing or sales department. It is critical that channel pros have a 360-degree view of partner data to make better decisions and streamline programs.”
How can a 360-degree view improve your speed to market?
As an example of the competitive differentiation your company can realize from a 360-degree view of your channel, John Stage, Senior Business Intelligence Manager at AMD shared at this year’s Rainmaker that his CEO receives a “comprehensive channel sales review every week.” This information is created from 1000’s of global channel partners managed by Model N CDM. With “easy access and a single source of truth” AMD is able to:
- Maintain data granularity identifying key data features such as:
- Product Features – Performance segment, frequency, package type, etc.
- Customer Features – Geography, market share size, and pricing strategy.
- Create consistent trends and have good candidates for linear regression models that are easily explained to others.
- Identify and establish a seasonality baseline and view quarter over quarter expected rates of change.
- Establish trends that aren’t obscured or convoluted.
Would you like to know how your company can create and maintain competitive differentiation from your channel data? Click here to learn more about Model N’s CDM. If you’d like to read more about AMD success, click this link. To learn more about Rainmaker, go here.
