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Why incentives and automation cannot replace channel program strategy
Every channel leader wants faster growth and better margins. Nobody wants to see revenue decline or profitability compression. When the numbers are not moving, they go looking for something that accelerates the channel program.
Walsh points out that acceleration comes in a few forms. While both common ones incentives and automation – can accelerate a channel program on their own terms, neither fixes a program that has no strategy underneath it. If you have not defined the program’s strategy and goals first, acceleration simply produces more activity. It does not produce a result you can count on.
What Must Be in Place Before You Automate a Channel Program?
Before any level of automation or artificial intelligence gets applied, Walsh says a set of organizational questions must be answered first.
What is the program, and what are the workflows behind it
What are the policies and processes that govern it
Who is going to govern it, and who is accountable for making the different pieces work
Skip that step, and a PRM implementation or incentive management platform can still fail to deliver. Not because the tools do not work, but because nobody built the foundation they were meant to run on.
Why Fixing Governance After PRM Implementation Costs More
Walsh sees this pattern often. A vendor buys a PRM or incentive management system expecting it to solve the channel program on its own. It can help, but it frequently falls short, because the strategic foundation underneath it was never built. Fixing that after the fact only slows things down and adds to the total cost of ownership.
This is the territory e2open Channel Managed Services is built for. E2open's channel experts help vendors build the program design, governance, and incentive enrollment that a PRM implementation or automation initiative depends on, before the technology goes live.
Program design and governance built before automation or AI gets applied
In-region specialists who support partner incentive enrollment and marketing execution
A foundation built to run in a cyclical optimization mode after implementation, so the program does not drift out of sync with the plan
See how e2open builds the governance your PRM investment depends on
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