cs-channels-partner-performance

Client Case
Increasing Partner Performance

When channel partners revenue start to fall off, the problem has to be fixed as quickly as possible so sales commitments are kept.

The sales of one of the largest service partners of CopierAB had steadily decreased for several quarters. CopierAB looked at the problem and eventually called Vaxa to investigate why this partner sales took a hit for reasons CopierAB could not figure out to any level of their senior management satisfaction.

But sometimes, things are not what they seem!

the PROBLEM
discovery
Results

Tab Content One

CopierAB designed a comprehensive channel partner infrastructure with different types of partners having complimentary expertise and capabilities. CopierAB had three main types of partners:

System Integrators who provided complete end to end solutions to customer problems and worked with a range of hardware and software companies to design the solutions.
Software companies whose applications provided a niche value to a customer problem.
Resellers who were primarily traditional product sales channels with minimum value added.

CopierAB was mainly concerned with the drop in sales of the first group and specifically with three System Integrators, since they constituted a meaningful portion of all partner sales. CopierAB initial impression was that the System Integrators were gravitating to other manufacturers' products and if that was the case, they want to find out what did other manufacturers' offer that CopierAB didn't.

Tab Content Two

Under such situations, Vaxa's initial approach is to listen as much as possible to CopierAB as to their impressions of why the drop off in sales were occurring and what they believe are some fixes. Our main objective in these early discussions is get a general idea of how expansive is CopierAB thinking of what is happening, the causes, weak spots in the system, and what can be done to fix it in the short and long term.

Vaxa took 3-prong approach on the assumption that any one of stakeholders in this ecosystem can hold the key:

CopierAB itself including its channels programs and processes, organization, incentives and so on.
The channel partner--are there changes to the partner's business model that is having an impact on CopierAB sales?
The customer--e.g. are customer needs changing, do they have issues with buying from specific channel partners?

As part of our multi-phase approach, Vaxa experts:

Analyzed the evolution of the CopierAB partner program leading up to and during the drop in the partner sale performance issues. This help us to see whether there were elements of the program had the same impact across other partner groups relative to that of System Integrators.
Conducted interviews and surveys across all partner types with an emphasis on System Integrators to allow us to quantify how partners felt about their relationship with CopierAB.
Interviewed several top producing customers with different profiles to get a sense of changing needs.

This 3-prong approach helped us to create a whole and realistic view of the issues, sources, and ways to fix the problems.

Tab Content Three

The results of our research showed that it was a combination of changing customer needs and behavior that was really affecting the drop off in sales in the System Integrator group. Large customers were starting to reduce solution outsourcing to this group and bringing that expertise in-house. Further, as this started to happen, customer realized for the first time how complex CopierAB products were to integrate and was decided to migrate to competitors' platforms. This integration complexity was previously hidden since it was done by an outside group.

What was thought of originally as a basic sales issue became a call to action to rethink CopierAB products, technologies, and integration into the customers' business.

Client CaseIncreasing Partner Performance

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Client Case
Increasing Partner Performance