Research, Analysis and Consulting Services

Building and Managing a Successful Channel Strategy

Let IDC navigate your business through the channel's rough waters. IDC can help you develop or optimize the best possible channel strategy. We can provide the optimal mapping of consulting services to fit vendor needs for channel information. We help vendors make informed decisions on growing and sustaining a winning channel strategy.

There are numerous situations in which a vendor, distributor or reseller can benefit from IDC's channel optimization:

• A product manager who needs to sell his product efficiently via the channel
• Top management, when the company assesses the efficiency of the existing channel strategy
• Partner executives, who are looking for new partners
• Partner executives experiencing growing channel conflicts - e.g. due to selling directly via the Internet

Why Use IDC Channel Consulting?

IDC knows your market from a different angle than yourself. We are therefore in a unique position to disscuss and assist you in your market approach. IDC analysts have the insight, methodologies and expertise to put themselves in your situation while maintaining an independent view of the market. Moreover IDC analysts are able to be in dialogue with the players you cannot talk to yourself. IDC is renowned for it's independency as well as quality research.

IDC's continued channel analysis ensures we know:

• Relative strength of the players in the channel
• Positioning of the channel players towards different segments
• Changes in customer buying behaviour
• ChannelBuilderT ensures a systematic and effective approach to channel analysis

This helps you:

• Choose best-fit partners
• Manage channel conflicts
• Combine direct and indirect sales in a viable way
• Adjust to customer buying patterns

A Systematic Process

Tool and Methodologies

Market sizing and Forecasts
IDC's proven methods on market size and forecasting is the basis for many IDC projects

Consumer and B2B user surveys
Every year IDC conducts business and consumer user surveys on hot topics. In relation to channel optimization, surveys expose the end-users purchasing patterns in terms of partner preferences etc.

Leadership Grid
IDC model used for competitive analysis. The strength of the model is that it quantifies and illustrates "soft" data.

ChannelBuilderT
Renowned iterative process for analysing channel dynamics. IDC's ChannelBuilderT is a flexible methodology, which in 7 stages and close cooperation with the client, develops or optimizes a channel strategy, which is consistent through the entire value chain.

Examples of Recent Channel Consulting Projects

Channel Strategy Development
Scope: A vendor launched a product, which had a different segment than they had previously targeted and needed to develop the most appropriate go-to-market model.
Benefit: Utilizing existing segment knowledge and information about the channel, IDC found that the best way of addressing the market was through a dedicated indirect strategy. IDC even helped identifying the most appropriate partners.

Positioning in the market
Scope: A large reseller needed to certify it's market position in order to complete a merger.
Benefit: IDC sized the market according to the client's perception of the market and positioned the various competitors in terms of size and focus. IDC thereby ensured that the merger went through smoothly.

For more information on this or other IDC research, please contact IDC Nordic Sales or your local IDC representative: