Impartner, a channel management platform and partner relationship management (PRM) provider, announced a new solution that automates partner tiering and tracking of partners’ progress in complying with tier and program criteria.
Once deployed, the new solution, Impartner Program Compliance Manager, automates updating partners on their program status, benefits and what is needed to get to the next level. Partners can check their status in a “frequent flyer” style display.
Monitoring partner program compliance is often plagued by complicated, irregular, and generally manual administrative work. This makes communicating status to partners cumbersome and results in regular and wide-reaching occurrence of errors and over-payments.
More than 80% of channel programs support multiple attainable tiers, levels or program types with different compliance metrics, according to an Impartner survey of channel managers and top channel strategists. 72% have at least three employees who work on evaluating, calculating and determining tier compliance. More than 20 percent report having at least six employees working on compliance specifically.
Impartner reported that 60% of vendors are not confident their partners are accurately segmented into the correct tiers. Of those, 78% said they may be overpaying their partners by up to 20%, with more than half of those estimating overpayments of up to $100,000 per quarter.
More than 40% of vendors evaluate, calculate and determine partner tier placement or audit program compliance only once per year; 53% review progress with partners in an ad hoc way, many only upon request by the partner, said Impartner.
“One of the biggest sources of channel friction comes from vendors and partners not being aligned with status and achievements directly affecting commissions and payments that are rife with errors and frustrating for everyone,” said Gary Sabin, Impartner VP of product management. “With a check box, Impartner Program Compliance Manager instantly reduces the administrative burden of channel teams and improves the ROI of their programs by giving them everything they need to automatically tier partners, track partner progress in complying with tier and program requirements, and communicate their status, benefits and what they need to do to progress to the next level – one of the most important tools in motivating partners to move up and to the right.”
Impartner Program Compliance Manager offers: