Insights
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Subscription Hardware Puts The Channel At Risk
Subscription-based hardware is the emerging model that every hardware vendor is promising to customers, partners, and investors. It’s a significant shift from the classic capex model in which firms spend money for outright hardware purchases. There are several scenarios such as new technology, short-term projects, test-before-you-buy, and infrastructure bundled with managed services, etc., where subscription-based […]
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Looking Ahead To Forrester’s B2B Summit EMEA 2023
Throughout the year, there is an ebb and flow to the things that I look forward to, often triggered by a certain event. For example, once my family has the winter-sport holiday behind us, I look forward to warmer weather and sunshine. The same happens to me when Forrester’s B2B Summit in North America is […]
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Successful Shared CX Needs New Partnership Dynamics
To succeed brands and retailers need to re-think their partnership dynamics to focus on their shared responsibility for customer experiences.
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Actionable Insights And Metrics That Unlock Channel Sales Growth
Importance Of Channel Sales Metrics Today, actionable insights are the backbone of channel sales organizations. Collecting the right data and transforming it into actionable insights enables channel sales leaders to spot risks, find opportunities for growth, and make smarter decisions. In other words, tracking the right metrics could mean the difference between hitting your channel […]
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Myths And Realities Of Channel Conflict: Evolving Partnership Dynamics Will Dissolve Channel Conflict Concerns
When discussing brands’ direct-to-consumer (DTC) digital strategies, I am often asked how brands are handling issues of channel conflict with retail partners. There are a few forerunners to my response: A brand’s DTC digital strategy is not just about direct transactional sales to consumers. All brands need a DTC digital strategy, which derives value beyond […]
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AT&T, Uber, And Zipcar Share Similarities With Subscription Hardware
Elucidate Subscription-Based Hardware Offerings Public cloud innovations influence your technology decisions in many ways. Cloud pricing is shaping the pricing for on-premises data center infrastructure. I receive many client calls around evolving subscription-based hardware, and those discussions reveal their confusions. As you aim to make an optimal decision for your business, let’s develop an understanding […]
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Shared Customer Experience: What Happens When Your CX Depends On Partners?
Organisations are not always fully in control of all of their customer’s experiences. Whether it’s logistics partners supporting a retailer’s delivery experience, insurance companies relying on sales via brokers, or consumer-facing brands relying on retail partners to sell their products, an organisation’s end-to-end customer experience (CX) often relies on external business partners. Across industries, brands […]
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Unlocking The True Business Opportunity For Modern Partners
The business opportunity for channel partners is larger than most vendors realize. Transform a linear transaction into exponential growth.
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All Brands Must Build Value From Direct-To-Consumer
The value of a brand’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) digital presence goes beyond direct sales. Brands that still rely heavily on retail partners for digital sales can still drive value from direct customer engagement. Of course, DTC consumer purchases benefit brands with better margins, since they avoid fees or commission charges from partners. The benefits go beyond […]
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Prepare Now For Successful 2022 Channel Sales Planning
Management and growth of the channel is too important to be left to chance. Here are the five actions to take in Q4 to ensure you and your organization are ready to begin building your 2022 channel sales plan.
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Top 59 Global IT Channel Media Outlets — What MSPs, MSSPs, Resellers, Integrators, And IT Consultants Read
Out of the 14 different spheres of influence that we track at Forrester, the channel industry trade press ranks near the top. Smart vendors and distributors know that the magic of finding, influencing, recruiting, enabling, and nourishing a top-performing channel boils down to three simple questions about partners: What do they read? Where do they […]
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Top 143 Social Media Groups For MSPs, VARs, And Tech Channel Professionals
The channel is very large, highly diverse, and incredibly decentralized. Channel partners know that to be successful, they need to carve out a niche — whether that be by line of business, by industry (and, increasingly, by subindustry), by size of customer, geographically, technologically, and by business model. These six vectors are not mutually exclusive, […]
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The 100 Best Channel Podcasts Of 2021
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.
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For Partners, If It Makes Dollars, It Makes Sense: Using TEI To Build The Business Case For Your Partner Program
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.
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Are Distributors The Future Of Distribution?
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, […]
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What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021
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 […]
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Channel Software Tech Stack 2021
^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 […]
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How Did I Score On My Channel Outlook For 2020?
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.
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The Ideal Partner Profile — A Channel Sales Leader’s North Star
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.
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Channel And Ecosystem Leaders Are Demanding More From Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Solutions
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 […]
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