Channel management process is a complex process that involves a lot of challenges and issues. Learn about those challenges and how you can overcome them in the post.

1. All You Need to Know about Channel
Management Process
The channel management process is a cost-effective way to expand a
business globally by partnering with aligned organizations to sell your
products and services. The channel management process involves some
level of control over the performance of an individual or team as your
partner. While managing these channels, there may be some challenges
that your business may face to ensure a mutually beneficial
relationship.
If you are also a business looking to manage different channels, this
post will walk you through the common challenges in the channel
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2. management process. You’ll also learn how to overcome those
challenges in an effective way.
Challenges of Channel Management Process
1. Channel partners are companies, not individual persons. While
talking of management of employees, consultants, or contractors, there
is some control over people. However, when talking about managing
channels, the level of control is comparatively much lower. This is
because it is an indirect sales force, and channels are companies instead
of people. Although those companies consist of salespeople, technical
people, and marketing people., the companies are entities rather than
individuals. This implies that the amount of complexity involved is huge.
2. In the case of a direct sales force, there is a hierarchy. Channel
partners don’t report to vendors. There is a manager who may report to
a VP in a company, but with a channel organization, it is not the same.
This is because there is a company reporting to a channel account
manager or partner business manager in channel organizations. This
reporting relationship is indirect, and if some partners fail to perform
over one or two subsequent quarters, they don’t get fired immediately.
They sometimes may miss incentives, but firing doesn’t take place as
immediately as it would while managing a direct sales force.
3. Channel partners, at times, have their own sets of priorities. These
priorities may not align with those of vendors. If a vendor tries to
promote a particular product or penetrate into a specific niche market -
say, manufacturing or healthcare or any other, your partner may not
find it valuable.
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3. 4. Different types of partners require different engagement models.
Some partners sell to small-size businesses, some to mid-market
organizations, some to enterprises, and some others to a combination
of two or more segments. For an organization to align with various
partners’ needs, there is a need to have appropriate programs that
require a significant level of thinking and homework. Further, there are
also differences in relationships based on revenue each channel partner
gives. Sometimes, vendors tend to give more importance to the
partners who yield more revenue than to those who yield less revenue.
Aligning the suitable level of resources with high-velocity and
high-volume partners and low-velocity and low-volume partners is
complex.
5. By and large, financial motives drive a partner’s loyalty. Like in a
startup environment, where a belief or cause of inspiration motivates
people, the prospect of financial gain drives the relationship in the end.
As the expectations change or the path toward the financial gain is not
clearly defined, it can cause friction and complexity.
6. A channel partner’s success depends on the competencies in an
ecosystem. Chances are rare that a partner - especially in the
technology or solution domain - sells only one product. For instance, if a
partner sells to the construction industry, technology sector, or
manufacturing, the partner may have two, three, or more vendors. A
partner’s competencies play a crucial role in determining its interest in a
particular set of solutions. Understanding those interests and aligning
with those competencies is critical and complex.
7. Forecasting is very tough when it comes to running large businesses.
One of the toughest challenges in the channel management process is
developing sales forecasts, especially when a company is in its nascent
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4. stage. In cases of a revenue business like a retail or franchise business
where the revenue doesn’t change much every quarter, predicting
demands within a few percentage points is easier. However, if the
economy is in distress or some particular product categories are
growing faster, working with the partner base to come up with an
accurate forecasting model can be one of the major challenges. This is
where understanding different types of partners and their sales
velocities holds importance. Without proper systems and processes in
place, businesses may find it extremely challenging to develop these
forecasts.
Solutions to Overcome Challenges in Channel Management Process
Now that you know the major challenges that businesses face in the
channel management process, let’s look at the solutions to help you
overcome these challenges.
1. Structured Channel Program - Every company requires its channel
program to be structured. It should not be just a single program but a
set of programs aligned behind different types of partners based on
their verticals, competencies, sales mix, locations, etc. Developing a
channel program as per partners in a systematic way can help reduce
waste and friction between both parties involved as you try to grow
your business.
2. Ease of Doing Business – Ease of doing business is a major factor in
channel management on both the partner and vendor sides. Often the
account manager spends more on-time fielding emails, phone calls,
etc., from partners. Therefore, it is important to address this problem
through a proper structure. When larger organizations acquire smaller
organizations, they tend to roll the acquired organization into their
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5. existing structure. Even though this integration may look even on the
surface, supporting infrastructure may be falling apart on the inside.
This may lead to the failure of the merger. This is why a proper structure
to optimize the acquisition is necessary in place beforehand.
3. Systems for Partner Relationship Management and Partner
Marketing Management - Businesses should deploy structured partner
relationship management and partner marketing management systems.
With a proper partner portal in place, a business can realize significant
returns, reduce labor costs, enhance ease of doing business, and
increase the efficiency of partner management.
CRMJetty - Your Key to Managing Channel Partners Effectively
If you are looking to overcome the challenges in channel management
and streamline your channel management, our partner portal can help
you with that. Our portal is a ready-to-integrate portal solution that you
can always configure as per your business logic. It has some features
that make it an ideal partner management solution, as below.
1. Lead Management
For businesses with a high volume of incoming partnership requests,
our portal helps make workflow smooth. It helps create a workflow as
per your business logic and automate the process of management of
partnership requests.
2. Role-Based Access
Providing access to CRM entities is crucial for any business. But there is
a need to restrict access to different CRM entities as per the type of the
user. Using our custom partner portal solution, you can decide to
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6. provide role-based access to your different partners and their team
members to enhance security and streamline operations.
3. Sharing Confidential Business Data
There are certain product installation videos, lists of use cases, and
several other types of confidential data that you would want to make
available to only a small group of confidants. A partner solution can
help you make that possible and provide confidential data to only
certain users.
Know more
4. Purchase & Invoicing
While entering into a channel partnership agreement, the end goal of
any partnership is commercial benefits. Whether it is enabling specific
discounts for partners, generating POs and invoices, or generating
payments, you can manage it all using a partner portal solution.
5. Security
Using our services, we can build an Online Partner Portal for your
business that is an extension of your CRM. Alternatively, you can choose
to develop a web-based portal independent of the CRM. Either way, the
database remains on your servers, and your security remains intact.
We are a CRM consultancy with over 14 years of experience in portal
development solutions for various leading CRM systems, including
Suite/SugarCRM, Salesforce, etc. Our development team follows two
approaches - launch-ready portal solution integration and custom
development.
First, our team gathers your portal requirements and analyzes them. If
they don’t differ much from our portal’s features, our team provides
you with the ready-made partner portal that we have. If your portal
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7. requirements require slight customization in our ready-to-integrate
portal, we do that for you and provide you with the final product. If the
product you require is largely different from our current product, we
also adopt a custom-build approach to build a portal exclusively for your
business. We keep giving you updates on the development throughout
and test the final product for market readiness. Once everything is fine,
we roll out your partner portal to you for your final use.
So, get your partner portal ready and streamline your channel
management process right away!
Manage Channels the Right Way
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