Last time, we defined best practices. But who decides what best practice areas are, and what constitutes a best practice within them? Do you know what best practice targets to shoot for within your channel? And if you achieve Best Practice performance, what are the potential payoffs? After all, if you’re going to change your business, you want to know why, and what to expect in return…what’s your best practice ROI?
As to who decides, well it turns out there are a variety of firms who have the coverage and expertise to evaluate processes across companies and functions, and link the observed results to the practices utilized. As you’d expect, this includes large services firms like PwC, specialized consulting firms like the Hackett Group, and solution vendors that provide centralized processing services across multiple customers.
And what’s the best practices ROI? Well here are a few channel stats collected from multiple sources:
- Track channel inventory from vendor to end customer to reduce gray market activity- Impact is 6 – 8% of Revenue
- Automate channel sales reporting to capture improperly reported or missing sales – Impact averages 10% of Revenue
- Use POS data as an input to demand signal management – Impact is 2 – 7% of Revenue
That should be enough to get your attention…and that’s just the start…
