Channel Partners

With more than 2 million podcasts available how do you find the best channel podcasts? Forrester's Principal Analyst Jay McBain has you covered. Check out the list of the best 100 channel podcasts of 2021.

A Forrester channel TEI study highlights the economic metrics and the business advantages to choosing to work with that partner. These studies can explain and break down the economics and the outcomes of a partnership investment in real-dollar terms partners understand — not just gold, silver, and bronze.

I made a prediction in January of 2018 that IT distributor disruption would continue. It was obvious that industry consolidation was accelerating, major distributors were diversifying, and private equity was getting more interested in transforming the industry. In the second half of last year, the two largest global IT distributors were acquired by private equity, […]

  Last year ended up being a tale of two cities for the channel. On one hand, customers and governments recognized partners as an essential service and central to their ability to rapidly respond to a worsening pandemic early in the year. With catlike reflexes, the IT channel emptied the laptop supply chain and became […]

^CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL SCREEN^ The channel software stack comprises a group of technologies that help companies develop, design, and execute plans to find, recruit, onboard, develop, enable, incent, co-sell with, manage, measure, and report on partners. Delivering automation of indirect sales processes, workflows, and partner programs, channel software is becoming increasingly critical to a […]

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.

B2B channel chiefs often forget or overlook the impact that partner profiling has on the indirect business. An ideal partner profile is a “job description” for hiring new partners, and this profile data is connected to every decision that a channel chief will make.

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 […]

Even in the best of times, starting the new year off fast is important. With the continuing uncertainty and turmoil caused by COVID-19, channel sales leaders must act now to ensure their team can hit the ground running on day one of the new year.

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.

Industrial manufacturers need tighter integration with applications such as CRM and enterprise resource planning to price product and service bundles effectively.

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.