According to reports, at any given moment, there is $1 trillion of inventory across the planet, flowing through the indirect sales channels. Leading Fortune 500 manufacturers as well as disruptive innovators from across various industry sectors are increasingly adopting the discipline of channel data management (CDM) to grow their businesses by having visibility into critical channel intelligence. With a reported adoption rate of 40 to 50 percent each year over the next decade, Ashish Shete, Vice president, Products and Engineering, Zyme, tells Techseen-how channel intelligence provided by CDM drives many key business processes.
Techseen: How important is channel data optimization for growing enterprises and e-retailers? And how can it be achieved?
Shete: Channel data optimization is key for global manufacturing organizations that sell through indirect channels, including retailers, e-tailers, resellers and distributors. Without Channel Data Management (CDM), these organizations lack the complete and accurate view into indirect sales data they need to run their businesses. Organizations require on-demand, clean and trustworthy data for informed critical businesses decisions, and to understand who their end-user customers are.
By implementing a CDM platform, organizations can gain insight on the route-to-customer for their products, realize a robust omni-channel presence by monitoring their products across e-commerce channels, and increase the ROI from their channel business by uncovering untapped market segments or by optimizing the performance of channel partners. Moreover, a reliable CDM platform enables manufacturers to significantly improve inventory management, increase the effectiveness of channel marketing and incentives programs, and optimize the entire channel by streamlining business processes with actionable, decision-grade data.
Techseen: Do you think organizations are adopting Channel Data Management (CDM) as a means to manage key channel business processes? Do you identify any specific requirement that companies must comply with?
Shete: Organizations implement a CDM platform to data-enable their key business processes with critical channel intelligence. Let’s take post-sales services for example – suppose a manufacturer ships a particular SKU to a reseller in January, and the unit is sold to the end-customer in March, how will the manufacturer know when the product warranty should take effect? When should they approach the end-customer for warranty renewal?
Similarly, large manufacturers often run multiple, tiered, and complex incentives programs with partners to drive sales. Without the 20/20 visibility and accurate data offered by a CDM platform, manufacturers often end up overpaying incentives up to 15 percent – causing significant erosion of their margins.
One of the key requirements for successful CDM adoption is “stakeholder alignment.” This includes internal stakeholders of an organization as well as channel partners. The entire channel value chain has to drop the status quo of flying blind and adopt CDM for data-driven visibility.
Techseen: How beneficial do you think Zyme’s CDM platform has been in managing critical channel intelligence for companies? And how different is its offering from its market competitors?
Shete: Leading organizations across industries have adopted Zyme’s CDM as a mission-critical solution for the channel business. In fact, one Fortune 1000 company standardized on Zyme’s CDM platform and achieved a 3-year risk-adjusted ROI of 197 percent with a payback period of 1.1 months.
Zyme’s 100-percent SaaS CDM platform is powered by an array of highly scalable state-of-the-art proprietary technologies and global directories with extremely rich and curated content. With the industry’s highest and market-verified data accuracy SLAs, Zyme delivers the channel intelligence that can help global manufacturers optimize their channel businesses. Moreover, Zyme also offers a holistic portfolio of value-added services by channel experts to support partners across multiple geographies and time zones.
With more than 70 percent market share, Zyme is the number one CDM company offering manufacturers 20/20 visibility to the very edge of their channel. The global scale of Zyme’s CDM platform, the breadth of capabilities, and the depth of our CDM expertise set us apart from our competitors.
Techseen: What are the common challenges that arise while enabling companies to do so?
Shete: One of the key challenges to enabling companies to manage critical channel intelligence is the lack of awareness about the scale of the problem. Many companies still manage their channel business using spreadsheets or expensive on-premise applications that cannot scale to meet the organization’s requirements. Zyme often acts as a change agent by educating companies about the significant risks associated with managing the channel in a sub-optimal manner.
Techseen: How is Zyme planning to maximize ROI and visibility for its client roster, ahead?
Shete: We are planning to maximize ROI and visibility for our customers and partners in the coming years as the benefits of channel data management proliferate across the market. CDM adoption is continuing to increase as more value becomes realized; this trend will only continue. The benefits our clients and partners receive from Zyme’s CDM solutions include visibility of end-customers and N-tier partners in the channel, and managing complex incentives programs to drive channel sales growth.
We just recently launched zyme cloud platform 3.0, the most advanced CDM platform in the industry. Zyme’s Global Channel Directory of nearly 2 million validated channel partners globally, the Global Location Directory that offers postal-code level information, and the Global Retailer Directory offer unmatched channel intelligence to our customers. We are the first CDM company to offer incisive analytics on smartphones and tablets for consumption by channel leaders on the go. We aim to continue leading the CDM space with exciting new products, capabilities, and services to help our customers be the best in their game.
Techseen: What are your future plans in terms of growth and expansion?
Shete: Looking at Zyme’s future, the biggest opportunity is with the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices.
Estimates suggest that 75 percent of IT products and services sold to businesses in the U.S. are delivered via the channel. Combine this with the fact that research firm IDC estimates global spending on IoT devices and services to rise from $656 billion in 2014 to $1.7 trillion in 2020. This growth will boost demand for “purpose-built” IoT platforms, application software, and cloud-based “as a service” solutions for device management, which is where our business comes in.
As demand continues to grow for IoT devices, organizations need a way to track the devices throughout the route to customer, before they are activated by the end-user. Zyme’s module tracks connected devices down to individual serial numbers in real-time. By closing the loop between manufacturers and end-users, Zyme provides the context necessary to understand and act on the enormous volume and variety of data generated by IoT devices.