Call for a more measured approach

The channel needs much better metrics and measurement if it is to win over coveted smaller customers, warns Carl West

Billions of pounds have dropped out of the consumer and business markets. At these times, businesses can look to bunker down or sell their way out of decline. While there have been mixed messages on different IT segments, cloud, services, consumerisation, BYOD, tablets and many more offer great opportunities and challenges for the industry.

But there is something fundamental that many businesses overlook. Business and market intelligence - measuring and marrying inside behaviour and outside response - are crucial. Whether the business interacts with clients face to face, online, by telephone or documentation, there needs to be clear calls to action and a comprehensive set of metrics.

In the UK IT channel, I have seen use of total addressable market (TAM), RoI, and brand share development (BSD). They are not always measured accurately, but a swathe of processes and policies can deliver the same, if not more, opportunities. IT often complains of too much or irrelevant data but often this is due to a lack of engagement. In addition, different metrics between companies confuse the message as well as the measurement.

The customer journey is far more rewarding to create, track, manipulate and maximise. All businesses look to sell as much as possible at the best possible margins. And the gap is narrowing between personal and corporate consumer, although the factors in their purchase journey are weighed differently.

BI tools including ERP, SAP and CRM are used in many companies. Market intelligence platforms are offered by many companies including my own. Online businesses are ahead of the game, incorporating more complex tracking of search, landing, click and purchase. A measured, structured engagement helps any business become more effective.

With any strategy there is a process of planning, doing and reviewing. Each stage, internal or external, has requirements regarding historic, present, and future measurement.

Data sets exist at each point and in some cases have limited links. Each stakeholder has its own internal BI and view of performance. Visibility of vendor performance is passed back through the channel, and at each touch point you have TAM per stakeholder. Typically, this model rewards bigger stakeholders with a higher percentage of the marketing spend per company.

Share and share alike

The channel talks of engaging with the SMB and SOHO markets continually, but runs into cost barriers and then fails to accurately measure the RoI.

In my opinion, the blame is spread evenly across the channel. Vendor announces new programme with new funds for SMBs. Distributor uses mass-market call campaign and mailings. SMB has limited engagement.

Now imagine a reseller or group of resellers present a business plan sharing their sales performance against the overall market by category, brand and SKU, including forecast growth based on measurable marketing initiatives that will require channel funding.

This business plan would contain all the information needed to show where investment could grow share, to which the distributor can allocate vendor funds. The same market data allows the distributor to qualify the opportunity, so it can calculate its share of sales-out and potential reseller impact on its growth. The vendor sees the same market data and can evaluate the marketing investment by product type, nature of marketing programme and the profile of resellers engaged.

All these processes are, in one form or another, in existence but the data quality and data set varies at each point.

Today every resource is evaluated and all marketing spend scrutinised. Ever since 2008 I have read regularly about marketing departments being culled. A more effective channel and engaged marketing department can increase sales, reduce costs, deliver profit and share clear performance metrics.

Carl West is business group director at GfK