Jay McBain

In what was one of the most challenging years for many of us, the channel experienced more change in 2020 than in the past 39 years combined. Revisit our 2020 channel predictions, and see which of our calls proved true, which accelerated, and what it means for 2021. That being said, many of the calls that I did make not only became true but accelerated due to COVID-19. That being said, many of the calls that I did make not only became true but accelerated due to COVID-19.

As brands increasingly use different types of partners to reach, influence, transact, and retain customers, partner relationship management (PRM) solutions are being asked to serve both traditional and nontraditional channels at a new level of scale and personalization. Managing these growing ecosystems in a consistent, predictable, and productive way is critical to the success of […]

A couple of years ago, I made the prediction that we were entering the third stage of sales and marketing — the decade of the channel ecosystem. With over 75% of world trade flowing indirectly, I started to sense an influx of investment in and attention on indirect sales by firms in all industries. Looking […]

Online marketplaces have been around in one form or another for decades. Accelerating the trend is a myriad of factors including changing buying behaviors and demographics, companies shifting to subscription and consumption models, and the rising importance of ecosystems. Put simply, the future business buyer will look more and more like a consumer.

In-person channel events are slowly returning, albeit in a modified form. Expect more of these physical/virtual hybrid events to pop up in the coming months.

Ecosystems don’t run on spreadsheets anymore. Principal Analyst Jay McBain provides a detailed look at the channel software market and its ability to help drive business and relationships.

The communications industry is facing a perfect storm of converging forces, from COVID-19 to the rise of influencer marketing and even AI. At Forrester, we research around 10,000 global technology vendors that utilize indirect sales and often get asked about the value of PR in the channel. A trend that is affecting many channel leaders […]

With COVID-19 still spreading and broad quarantines, shutdowns, and other measures to contain it continuing, it is still impossible to make definitive predictions of its impact on the tech channel. Instead, we are using three scenarios that take into account different recovery start times and shapes of recovery graphs. More detail around these scenarios, tech […]

How will the technology channel be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? Read a list of likely scenarios and what it could mean for the long-term.

Legacy metrics don’t reveal the true impact of partner ecosystems. Now more than ever, channel organizations must demonstrate the business impact of their budgets.

The ways B2B buyers and sellers transact are changing dramatically. Learn about the shifts ahead in 2020 and beyond.

With the influx of new channel partner types across the ecosystem, moving them quickly and efficiently from recruitment to productivity relies on automated and scalable onboarding technology. Channel leaders can overwhelm new channel partners with too much information that is not relevant to their role or focus. The unfortunate, and too frequent, result is a […]

  If you haven’t listened to a podcast yet, you’re now in the minority.  According to Podcast Insights, 51% of the US population has listened to at least one podcast. Since the first podcast came on the scene in 2004, there are now over 750,000 podcast shows with over 30 million episodes. What’s behind this […]

Channel professionals want to talk about expanding their partner programs and building broad ecosystems, but the truth is that many of their basic program and channel management processes are still painfully manual and error-prone. Before accelerating their channel program, they need to apply basic automation technologies to get their front- and back-end systems to a […]

With Google and numerous ratings sites at their fingertips, why do partners choose communities? During this time of growing electronic ubiquity, the need for trusted and expert sources of information has increased significantly.

Channel incentives are used to improve indirect sales performance, orchestrate partners’ behavior, and engender channel loyalty. For decades, channel professionals have used channel incentives to drive behavior, whether establishing new behaviors, suppressing old ones, or repositioning partners for a new opportunity. Incentives are also effective in masking deficiencies in business value propositions. Channel incentives and […]

  We have seen more disruption in the channel in the past 18 months than we saw in the past 37 years combined. As a review, here were my 2018 predictions.   1. Private equity will continue its sweep of the channel software space, creating some unicorns along the way. Verdict: As mentioned in the […]

Leverage Channel Data To Give Partners A Better Experience: Winning In The Channel Requires Data-Driven Program Innovation     Brands that provide an enhanced partner experience grow faster than their peers, are more profitable, and drive higher customer satisfaction and retention downstream. Smart channel professionals are looking at data across the partner journey as a […]

*** ALERT: NEW 2021 STACK NOW PUBLISHED HERE! ***     (CLICK FOR HIGH RES) The channel technology stack is a group of technologies that brands leverage to manage and improve their indirect sales processes and partner programs. Often, the focus of channel technologies is to make difficult processes easier, automate workflows, measure multi-tier activities, […]