Channel Management Maturity: How to Get There
b'The concept of a channel has existed since the Stone Age\\u2013when one person bartered with another. While technology has evolved rapidly over the past few thousand years, for many companies the state of their channel maturity still resembles antiquated methods that stifle growth. \\nBased on our engagement with thousands of channel partners worldwide and our evaluation of how vendors deploy channel management, we have come up with a basic four-step framework for partner lifecycle management (or activities). We break down this lifecycle into four core areas: partner recruitment, partner engagement, partner enablement, and partner management.\\nAs a part of the channel management maturity evaluation, it is essential to understand which phase a company is in when it comes to these four different areas of activities. This serves as a starting point with the idea that the channel will evolve and grow.\\nPhase 1: Laying the Foundation \\nThis is the start-up phase of channel development. When you look at the activities at this level, it covers the following: \\n\\n Partner Recruitment \\n The company has some basic partner recruitment capabilities in place by running tradeshows, webinars, and call-out campaigns. Recruitment is ad hoc, and not really focused around partner profiling or competency development, but more opportunistic. \\n Partner Engagement \\n The company knows how to provide a basic infrastructure. In many cases the following are homegrown: \\n\\n\\n Partner portal- Tends to be patched together using either open source software, SharePoint or some other web development tools. However, the portal is monolithic, not localized and cannot offer personalized content. With that said, at this stage the basic content exchange capabilities are in place. Some companies in this phase deploy a basic level of partner relationship management automation.\\n Partner onboarding- Signing contracts, training partners on how to sell and putting business plans together are the core steps in this phase, but most of these activities are done manually and there are no systems in place to track the progress of partner engagement.\\n Partner communication- A weekly or monthly newsletter goes out to partners, but communication is not broadly aligned with strategic initiatives and intent. Most content is highly tactical, and not necessarily controlled and aligned with broader corporate initiative. Very rarely at this stage do we see deployment of partner relationship management automation. \\n\\n\\n Partner Enablement \\n The company provides a basic level of marketing and sales tools. \\n\\n\\n Marketing and sales enablement- Price lists, product data sheets, marketing templates are available for partners to use. However, content is not mobile-friendly and not easy to search, tag and find at this level. \\n Partner training- A basic partner certification and training mechanism is in place, but there is no structured learning management system (LMS) to digitally train, track and certify partners across multiple countries and languages. \\n\\n\\n Partner Management \\n The company has a loosely defined partner incentive structure in place, primarily using market development funds. \\n Incentives are available on an ad hoc basis, but no structured quarterly programs are in place, nor is there any competency alignment.\\n\\t\\nPhase 2: Refining the Structure to Scale \\nCompanies entering this phase have a significant portion of their revenue (perhaps more than a few hundred million dollars) coming from the channel, and the channel is a strategic piece. Also, we see more prevalent deployment of automation to streamline multiple areas and workflows globally. \\n\\n Partner Recruitment \\n Partner recruitment is a strategic initiative\\u2013structured in a few countries, but ad hoc in others. Some partner profiling analysis is done to understand what territories need pruning, and where new partners needed to be added.'