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Vendor ‘Data Fails’ Cap Channel Rewards

Reading, UK - 25th May, 2017 - Zyme, the market leader in the rapidly growing discipline of channel data management (CDM), opened its third UK CDM Summit with a warning to attendees that having ‘trust’ in channel performance is no longer enough to satisfy board members, or stakeholders. Quoting independent research recently conducted, the company stated that for 75% of respondents there is now increasing pressure to prove return on investment (ROI) on partner incentives. This will be problematic for some however as 52% admitted that they have to trust channel partners to provide the accurate data needed because they can’t manage it in-house.

93% of the organisations questioned confirmed that incentive payments are currently treated as a cost of doing business rather than an investment to carefully manage longer term return. As a result of this lack of attention it was estimated by respondents that the channel, on average, was operating at an efficiency level of just 53% once ongoing rebate and incentive issues were considered. A staggering 61% of the companies that took part in the research also admitted that, in the last 12 months, financial rewards for the channel have had to be capped because of previous over-payments made in error.

“The biggest business concerns around channel incentives and rebates are the increasing operational and administrative costs of managing partner incentive programmes, ” said Nick Andrews, GM for EMEA and India at Zyme. “A quarter of respondents cited that they were concerned about incentive overspend on partner programmes due to data collection and recording issues, whilst 37% worried about incorrect payments being paid to channel partners. I think the stark reality is a number of organisations still don’t have firm control of their channel data so cannot start to estimate what funds are being allocated incorrectly, or which partners are in fact missing out.”

The report, entitled “Channel Data Management Barometer 2017, ” collated responses from 166 individuals with responsibility for / visibility of the management of data collected through the channel and shows that long incentive payment cycles are impacting working relationships (49%). The complexity and administrative burden of partner incentive programmes is also troublesome to manage (45%).

“Half the battle is that the mechanisms currently in place to encourage partner success vary widely. Just 61% said that they have agreed a common vocabulary with partners for example, ” continued Andrews. “Only 57% have a documented channel incentive strategy in place whilst less than half (43%) ask for partner input during the design of an incentive programme. The other side of the relationship needs increased attention too – a little over a third (34%) have a mechanism in place to measure partner satisfaction.”

However, it is not all doom and gloom. 96% of those surveyed consider the sharing of near real-time channel data to be an important way in which to improve relationships, which shows that some consideration is being given to strengthening longer term business arrangements. 78% also want to understand more about their channel partners and channel marketing expenditure which perhaps demonstrates that the channel is starting to get increasing attention from senior executives.
 
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