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b'Vendors selling to a channel need to enable their channel partners to generate and drive channel partners. This has been a challenge for almost all vendors, whether they are selling to vendors or consumers. While partners are a great fulfillment arm, few of them generate enough leads to drive demand on their own. To address the problem more companies over the past few years have been deploying channel automation platforms. However, the adoption of these platforms in the channel has been quite poor, and this has led to a lot of speculation and frustration. It has also led a number of companies to switch providers of channel marketing automation platforms, thinking that the move from one platform to another might help them attain higher levels of adoption. However, the issues generally lie elsewhere. Yes, the channel marketing automation platform needs to be robust, scalable, easy to use, etc., but only rarely is the failure to achieve widespread adoption of automation in the channel tied directly to the channel automation platform itself. In this article we will explore the core issues that underlie channel marketing automation adoption and outline steps vendors can take to generate ROI from the investment they are making in channel marketing automation platforms.\\nChallenges\\n\\n\\n \\tLack of partner resources. Most channel partners have neither resident marketing experts nor sufficient resources to create and execute campaigns on their own. As a result of that, most marketing channel automation platforms that are introduced into the channel are simply not used. The problem is not that the platforms are difficult to use, but that partners don\\u2019t have the resources\\u2014namely, time\\u2014to sit down and learn a tool and then go execute a campaign or a program. Also, in the case of large partners that do have sufficient resources, often those resources go into vendor management and relationship management rather than into the proper use of channel management automation software.\\n \\tLack of horizontal campaigns. Vendors typically deploy a marketing channel automation platform with new or niche products. Partners, on the other hand, generally do not want to squander whatever limited time and resources they have on programs that are not time-tested. In fact, one of the main challenges in spurring adoption of channel management automation is that deployment is often tested with campaigns that lack excitement on the partner side.\\n \\tLack of partner incentives. Vendors will often have several campaigns, assets, etc. uploaded on the marketing automation platform, but without aligning any specific incentives with those campaigns. As a result, partners fail to see the benefits of putting in all the hard work of executing a campaign when the easiest thing they can do is just have the vendors hand over qualified leads. From the partner perspective, that\\u2019s a more efficient way to go.\\n \\tLack of internal organizational alignment. It\\u2019s quite common in many organizations for the internal sales team or channel account management team or partner business management team not to be fully aligned with the channel marketing management automation system. In those cases, even when marketers load up a campaign on the platform, without inside sales or channel sales buy-in the campaign doesn\\u2019t go anywhere and the channel marketing platform is rarely discussed in a face-to-face partner meeting or in a phone conversation. As a result, channel marketing automation remains a \\u201csidebar\\u201d conversation rather than a mainstream focus.\\n \\tLack of public celebration. Most vendors have annual partner conferences where they try to promote the use of the channel marketing automation platform. However, most partners attending such conferences choose to attend such events for other reasons. Very rarely do they attend in order to check out all the cool features and functionality of a channel marketing automation tool, or to investigate the campaigns in such a tool or the services pr...'