By Charlie Abrams, Sr. Solutions Consultant
In a recent post by Jim Holland, he discussed the 10 Strategic KPIs for Channel Chief Success in 2020 according to the 2112 Group’s recent research. As a channel team in 2020, setting KPIs and establishing best practices early and revising often will allow companies to easily adjust to changes in the market. Not only do these KPIs rely on understanding your company’s go to market strategy and targets, but rely heavily on accurate and reliable channel data. Let’s explore three best practices that can help your team make the data grade.
In my role at Model N, I have the opportunity of working with many of our customers channel partners in high-tech. I often hear that ease of use is on the top of their minds when initially starting the on-boarding process. On the channel operations side, ensuring correct and timely POS, claim and inventory data received from these partners is the first step to measuring your KPIs effectively.
Best Practice 1: Many companies measure partner performance based on timeliness and accuracy of reported data. While this is a great way to establish a KPI, doing so relies heavily on the manual data review and in many cases checking email timestamps. As a best practice, companies gain flexibility when they automate this process and configure scorecards based on the channels and data types provided. This will allow your team to measure partner performance effectively.
Best Practice 2: In addition to scoring data, ensuring data delivery is easy and flexible can greatly assist with data accuracy and timeliness. Often, original or legacy data processes are being used. These may be outdated or manually oriented which can lead to delays in data delivery and increase in manual errors. As a best practice, companies should evaluate channel data solutions that handle various data formats instead rely on manual or piecemeal solutions to load data. Replacing these types of manual processes with an automated solution provides alerts to reduce the chance of errors and ensures data is delivered on time. Reducing manual steps for your channel partners can lead to improving partner satisfaction, another KPI that 2112 Group highlights.
Best Practice 3: Collaborating directly with your channel partners not only can help improve data accuracy and timeliness but helps your team form KPIs to help drive more effective indirect business. Two of the top 10 metrics that Jim focused on are driven directly through partners: New Logos and Partner Initiated Opportunities. Having accurate data empowered through automated channel data management solutions allow for accurate customer matching, ensuring that your team has visibility to new customers and business opportunities. Customer data varies greatly across channel partners, which can make it difficult for channel teams to identify true net new customers, and not simply variations of the same customer. As a best practices, customers greatly benefit from having an automated, systematic process to match incoming customer variations and identify net new customers.
As the new decade begins, let’s leave old, outdated channel data habits behind. Having clear 20/20 vision towards achieving your KPIs as a channel business will ensure your company is continuing to make your “data” grade. If you’d like to learn more about Model N’s channel data management solutions, go here.
