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Channel Management
Collaborative Execution with Distribution Partners
For companies with complex, multi-tiered distribution networks, maintaining visibility into sales and inventory activity is an ongoing challenge that complicates strategic planning and effective inventory management. After an initial sale to a distributor, these brand owners have little to no ability to monitor secondary sales, resulting in a lack of information for the sales and operational planning process. Distributors tend to use a mix of processes and technologies to manage their sales and inventory, leaving the brand owner with the daunting task of collecting and consolidating all the data after the event. As a result, brand owners struggle to quickly determine the best strategy to deploy their finished products while ensuring that distributor inventories can meet demand without storing excess inventories. Additionally, the brand owner has difficulty enforcing consistent pricing, promotion, and inventory policies while the distributors search for better ways to communicate with the brand owner to place orders and process returns and claims in an effective and timely manner.
Channel Management
Channel Management facilitates a collaborative exchange of information between the brand owner and its network of distributors. It enables more proactive management of distribution networks by providing real-time visibility into secondary sales and inventory. The enterprise can monitor individual distributor activity and activity across an entire distribution network to optimize inventory deployment. Channel Management also enforces compliance with pricing and inventory policy, as well as promotions such as coupons and discounts. Furthermore, it enhances the brand owner’s ability to track inventory in the event of a recall by providing visibility to each movement of goods. Because the brand owner knows the real-time status of inventory throughout its distributor network, management can anticipate and respond to demand more effectively, while minimizing overstock and returns.
Key Benefits:
- Facilitates optimal inventory deployment across a network of distributors
- Gain a detailed view of secondary sales
- Simplify distributor compliance with pricing and inventory policies
- Streamline sales orders and invoicing with channel partners
- Improve distributor accountability