Channel Management

Channel management is one of the newest and by far most challenging growth areas for the modern telco. Telecommunication has quickly become an industry that is dependent, in no small part, on its ability to create, manage, and motivate the activities of its channels and partner organizations.

Few telco managers imagined, when the first channel agreements were put in place, that they would grow so large and become so complex and critical so quickly. As as result, many telcos now find themselves struggling with too many different channels and no good means to direct their activities.

Managers are desperate for a framework to analyze channel activity, impose better monitoring and control mechanisms over channels, and to be able to answer tough questions such as:

• Which channel is delivering the best value customers?

• What is the cost per customer vs value of customer ratio for each channel?

• Are there other channel options that will make better economic or value contribution sense?

• How do I figure out what kinds of promotions and compensations plans to use on each channel?

Channel Management Systems are developed to help answer these kinds of questions.

Telco Channel Management Value Propositions

Channel managers have many problems to solve and a good solution can help to resolve many of them. Channel management systems help with the following:

• Channel Monitoring
  Keeping track of the sales and support activities that each channel is performing

  • Which channels are making what sales to what customers and when

  • What products the channel is moving

  • Where the products are going

  • What types of customers are buying the products

  • What prices are the products and services selling for

  • How many support issues is the channel addressing

  • Is the channel performing to customers' satisfaction

• Channel Support
  Providing channel partners with the information and materials they need

  • Pricing, promotion, and package information that the channel partner can use

  • Open conduit for communication between the channel partner and the company

• Channel Management
  Overseeing and directing the channel's activities

  • Oversee the flow of business through each channel

  • Monitor the proportion of business in different regions

  • Early warning on trouble spots and focus areas

• Channel Analysis

  • Analytics on the performance of each channel

  • Segmentation of channel customers

  • Valuation of channel customers vs cost of acquisition and support through the channel

  • Channel optimization

  • Channel selection

   

TTA Telco Channel Management Offerings

TTA can help you with many aspects of your channel management systems development activities. Our offerings in this area include the following.

• Definition of channel management system requirements

• Channel management software selection

• Channel management organizational readiness analysis

• Channel management operational implementation roadmap development

• Channel management requirements development

• Channel management system specification development

• Channel management system cost justification (business case development)

• Channel management implementation planning

• Channel management organizational setup (creating departments, roles, procedures)

• Channel management budgeting and operations

• Channel management systems architecture

• Channel management skills assessment and staffing recommendations

• Training I/T staff in channel management development and design

• Training sales force and management staff in the use of channel management tools

directly for more information about how TTA can help you with your telco channel management efforts.

Channel Management Software Vendors

At TTA, we can help you build a custom channel management solution or choose from among many of the available software/solution vendors.