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| CASE STUDIES |
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| Changing the way Hewlett-Packard communicates with its partners and customers |
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| FOCUS ON TNT EXPRESS |
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| TNT - Improving global customer service |
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ARTICLE LISTING |
As a management consultancy working across industries, VIA is uniquely positioned to share insights and best practices across many issues in managing channels and routes to market. Together with our clients and other experts, we have captured these lessons in several hundred articles. Browse the links below to find case studies, interviews, features, topical round-ups, VIA viewpoints, book reviews, best practice and insight.
Or click on the subject themes on the left to focus in on specfic topics or issues.
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| CASE STUDIES |
Making a multi-channel strategy work
Max Hotopf
We case study how John Deere sells through a big retailer, as well as its dealer chain. How did Deere remove the conflict? We talk to Cheryll Pletcher, director, channel marketing, and David Jeffers, manager, retail brand experience, of John Deere’s Commercial and Consumer Division.
I can see clearly now...
Max Hotopf
Gut feel and past numbers. All too often these are the foundations upon which suppliers construct their routes to market plans. We look at future drivers - a way of developing a clear, objective view of the potential of different channels and different partners.
Moving direct accounts to partners
Rosemary Wyatt
What is the best way to transfer direct accounts to your channel partners? Here is some advice to a large software vendor that is struggling to get its partners to take over properly.
Snuggling up to big retail
Julian Dent
Globalisation, the relentless squeeze on margins and the trend towards consolidation are all driving a new retail landscape and a closer relationship between retailers and their largest suppliers...
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| INTERVIEWS |
Facing up to grey markets
Max Hotopf
Legal but unauthorised channels bedevil many suppliers. But they can also be a blessing. We interview Anne Coughlan, professor of marketing at Kellogg School of Management about how to react.
Building solutions for customers
How can you use routes to market to creatively build solutions which meet customer needs? We talk to Lars-Erik Gadde, professor of industrial marketing at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.
Making strategic account management work
Max Hotopf
Are you bringing all the resources of your company to bear in your relationships with your most important customers? If so you are in a small minority. We interview Lisa Napolitano, president of the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA).
“O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!”
Max Hotopf
What look like perfect, close partner relationships can mask manipulation and deceit, leaving us like Hamlet to marvel at the wickedness of the world. We talk to Professor Erin Anderson of INSEAD about her field work with Professor Sandy Jap on how to best maintain and build relationships with intermediaries…
Sandy Jap, Associate Professor of Marketing, Goizueta: Taking the pain out of reverse auctions
Max Hotopf
Online reverse auctions, in which suppliers publicly vie to deliver a product for the lowest possible price, deliver major price cuts. But at what cost to supplier/buyer relationships? We talk to Sandy Jap, Associate Professor of Marketing at Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta.
Alex Sozonoff, Former President of customer Advocacy of HP: Getting closer to the customer
Max Hotopf
Using retired staff to listen to the customer, smoothing the end of the quarter and how distributors can cooperate. We interview Alex Sozonoff, chairman of the European Wholesaler Group and former VP Customer Advocacy at Hewlett-Packard.
Roy Warman, Founding member of Saatchis: Hitting small and medium businesses
Max Hotopf
How can you best profile and target small and medium businesses, and what role do channels play in this process? We talk to Roy Warman, a founding member of Saatchi & Saatchi, who has spent much of his career in advertising wrestling with how to sell to SMBs.
Philippe Jeaneret, WW sales development director, HP IPG: Building partner-centric account management
Rosemary Wyatt
How do you get a thousand account managers worldwide to creatively develop new opportunities with your partners? We interview Philippe Jeanneret, worldwide sales development director in Hewlett-Packard’s Imaging and Printing Group, on how HP and consultants VIA International devised and implemented a five-year project to do just this.
Rainer Fuehres, Senior General Manager at Canon Consumer Imaging: Becoming a real European
Max Hotopf
Many large suppliers are centralising power at their European head offices. We interview Rainer Fuehres, Senior General Manager at Canon Consumer Imaging, on how it has centralised channel management
Professor David Ford, Bath: Twinkle, twinkle, little star
Max Hotopf
The whole concept of channels or routes to market is redundant, according to Professor
David Ford of the University of Bath in the UK. Think instead of huge galaxies of networks in which your company is but a single node.
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| FEATURE ARTICLE |
How to measure and master mindshare
Max Hotopf
A revolutionary new idea allows suppliers to accurately assess and improve their mindshare with intermediaries.
“I love you and you love me” – getting rid of Barney the dinosaur
Max Hotopf
Having run a £100m sales distributor, Jan Lawford crossed the tracks to build channel sales for software company RSA Security. We look at how she used her experience to build a new model and how she ousted Barney - an objectionable, deep purple dinosaur.
Using information to win the retail blitzkrieg
Max Hotopf
As industries commoditise, so the lightning-fast battle inside the retail channel becomes ever more important. Success goes to the supplier who can react instantaneously to change. Andy Tallian and Kara Kerker of Marketframes look at how.
Transforming account managers
Max Hotopf
Actually changing the way account managers work with partners and major customers is extraordinarily difficult. However HP has found a way of managing this change.
Protecting the company’s trademark? That’s not my job!
Paul Sher
As a channel manager what do I need to know about Trademark Protection? Why should I care? In any case: What can I do about it?
Retail: Time to end the game of ‘beat you up’
Michael White
Increasingly, retailers want suppliers with strong account management, robust strategy and a willingness to partner. And suppliers are stepping up to the plate.
All change for automotive
Guy Swarbrick
The motor industry doesn’t want to believe that alterations to its European Union block exemption, will make change inevitable. VIA director Guy Swarbrick argues that manufacturers and dealers could be in for a rude shock.
Sink or swim time for pharma
Max Hotopf
The internet, political change and lower profitability are forcing the pharmaceutical industry to re-think its entire routes to market map. Hugh Gosling, former editor of Pharmaceutical Marketing, investigates….
Choice of law: Best legal strategy
Max Hotopf
By changing just one word in the contract and applying say English law rather than Belgian, you could avoid paying out hundreds of thousands of euros. Paul Sher, a partner at Rawlings Giles Sher, a law firm that specialises in channels and distribution looks at how to make the right choice of law.
Rewarding added value
Julian Dent
Rewarding channels for adding value can move your co's share price by cutting go to market costs, seizing a dominant position or ensuring happier customers. When does it work & what are the pitfalls?
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| TOPICAL ROUND-UP |
Top buying group jumps industries
Max Hotopf
As buying group Affiliated Distributors is looking to move into new industries and is even researching Europe.
Commission awaits Bayer decision
Max Hotopf
Remember all that kerfuffle last year when GlaxoSmithKline imposed quotas on its distributors in mainland Europe? In an effort to curb grey importing, GSK set limits on how much any distributor in any country could buy.
The day of the RFIDs
Max Hotopf
So far there are only around 800 million things in the world tagged with radio frequency identifier devices (RFIDs). But the fledgling industry behind the new technology – tiny chips with antennae that can be read by scanners – believes trillions of items will be tagged soon, everything from a can of coke to a car. RFID could revolutionise the supply chain.
Mobile phone replaces the loyalty card
Max Hotopf
Just hand over your mobile phone the next time you are asked for a loyalty card.
‘Ah, who cares? I’ll be out of here’
Max Hotopf
There has been a massive swing towards short-term thinking among sales and marketing executives in the last two years, according to Professor Erin Anderson at INSEAD.
How is the HP/ Compaq merger going so far?
Max Hotopf
In general, distributors are cautiously optimistic, but they worry that the merger may yet see HP clap its eyes on its navel, rather than on the market.
Motor industry uses block exemption to cut dealers
Max Hotopf
Motor manufacturers are rationalising their dealer channels, following the introduction of the new European Union block exemption. This should lead to the emergence of larger dealer groups selling multi-brands.
Profiling problem children and deserters
Max Hotopf
Suppliers can profile their intermediaries and identify groups such as problem children and deserters, according to new research, carried out by Xerox and based on an earlier study of channel trust.
Do joint loyalty schemes work?
Max Hotopf
Battle has been joined by purveyors of two different loyalty schemes.
Car makers breath sigh of relief
Max Hotopf
Carmakers look set to keep most of the privileges they enjoy under the current European Union block exemption.
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| VIA VIEWPOINT |
Mindshare matters
Julian Dent
Win the hearts, minds and involvement of your intermediaries and you can massively improve your performance. That, in a nutshell, is the promise offered by increased mindshare.
The long view
Julian Dent
How much time do you spend on long term projects – on stuff which might take a couple of years to plan, implement and start to pay back? In general, the more senior you are, the more time you will spend on lengthier time horizons. But I find the answer varies a lot from individual to individual, as well as from industry to industry.
What matters?
Julian Dent
As this is our tenth issue, I thought it would be a good time to review what we do in the Routes to Market journal, and why VIA International publishes it.
Renovating marketing
Julian Dent
As consultants, we are usually brought in to tackle the big issues where it is possible that no one in house has particular expertise, such as channel strategy. But often what people really want is help with renovating their go-to-market capabilities.
The problem with CRM
Julian Dent
Ask most chief marketing officers about customer-relationship-management (CRM) systems, and watch them force a wry smile. Normally this masks a very deep sense of frustration and lost credibility with their management colleagues.
The channels role in delivering customer experience
Julian Dent
The naked product is what most suppliers still push in their advertising. Features, benefits, brand, corporate image. What is so often missing is a nod to the real buying experience and the contribution that channels actually make to the process.
Routes to market are the new key to differentiation
Julian Dent
What will be the single most important source of competitive advantage in FMCG, pharmaceuticals and financial services over the next five years? A few years ago manufacturing efficiency, brand strength and research and development would have headed the list.
EU fails the customer every time
Julian Dent
The European Union claims to love the consumer. ‘Competition policy aims to ensure wider consumer choice… and effective price competition,’ it claims in its Citizen’s Guide to Competition Policy.
Make sure you are taking care of your best partners
Julian Dent
Are you subsidising your best partners with your worst?
Channels are part of the solution
Julian Dent
If you buy some fruit and vegetables from a market-stall have you bought a product or a solution.
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| BOOK REVIEWS |
The key to account management
Max Hotopf
We review Key Account Management and Planning by Prof. Noel Capon of Columbia Business School, which bills itself "the reference handbook on key account management."
Killing three routes to market myths
Max Hotopf
We review a book which challenges much of the received wisdom in routes to market, including the three myths behind most RTM strategies. Managing Business Relationships should be compulsory reading for anyone active in the field.
Alliances of the future
Max Hotopf
A new book, Mastering Alliance Strategy, to be published in January, brings together a host of research on alliances from a dozen of the leading alliance academics. We interview Professor Ben Gomes-Casseres, one of its principal authors, and review the book.
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| BEST PRACTICE |
Benchmarking: creating order out of chaos
Max Hotopf
Can you spot the market segments with the biggest opportunities in each country and marry them to your most capable partners? We talk to Chris Rose, global account director at Trimble, the market leader in global positioning system (GPS) technology, about how to harness the power of benchmarking.
When and how should you invest with partners?
David Coleiro
Ever made a big investment only to find that your partners really had little or no commitment to you? VIA consultant, David Coleiro looks at how to find out when partners are ready to reciprocate, allowing you to systematically decide when and how to invest…
Getting dealers to embrace your brand
Guy Swarbrick
Often dealers whisper your name softly. They may be in denial about their dependence upon you, their main supplier. Yet there are huge mutual benefits if only they can be persuaded to embrace and use the suppliers’ brand. VIA’s Guy Swarbrick shows how.
How to formulate successful channel strategy
Max Hotopf
Few companies sit down and think through their channel strategy from first principles. Yet this approach offers huge benefits. It makes it far easier to recruit and manage the right partners and so to reach the right customers. Guy Swarbrick, a director at VIA International, explains how he goes through the process.
Developing Account Managers’ Skills
Max Hotopf
Gone are the days when account managers shoved products down the throats of intermediaries. Today, it is about building deep and lasting relationships with a whole variety of players. So what skills do today’s partner-account managers need? We interview Anna Sundt, a consultant at VIA International…
Acquisitions that don’t bleed sales
Max Hotopf
Many acquisitions fail because of lost sales, according to recent research. It is easy for sales forces and channels to defect or under-perform in the critical first few months.
Controlling sell-through channels
Chas Pell
Your intermediaries trash your prices, diss your brand and won't support your product.
So what can you do about it? RTM editor Max Hotopf talks to Chas Pell, a director of VIA International, on how suppliers can exert control...
Should you be investing in PRM?
Max Hotopf
Faced with the need to work with ever more partners and influencers, many suppliers have turned to websites and email. The hope is that these partner relationship management (PRM) systems can offer an effective, low-cost alternative to face-to-face visits and telesales. But it doesn't always work out that way...
Partner portals that really work
Max Hotopf
Oracle claims its recently launched Oracle Partner Network portal as a major success. It consolidates no fewer than 23 previous sites. Oracle claims that, since its launch last autumn, staff from 67% of its partners visit the site three times a week or more. Previously, the 23 sites were visited by only 27% of partners twice a week! The site is multilingual, with many sections localized into scores of languages.
Winning at retail
Max Hotopf
In the previous feature, we mapped out how retailers are changing their approach to suppliers. But how does this work out today? How do you nurture and improve your relationship with buyers and category managers? Here we look at the things you need to get right today - to ensure a seat at the table tommorrow....
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| INSIGHT |
Winning Partner Mindshare
Max Hotopf
Many suppliers struggle to win the participation and involvement of their intermediaries. We report from the Routes To Market Association conference on how best to win their hearts and minds
The alternative to the discount default
Michael White
Suppliers are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on following me-too discount strategies with retailers. VIA director Michael White looks at the alternative.
Push or pull?
Max Hotopf
What slice of your marketing cake should you invest in creating consumer demand? And how much should you spend on marketing through routes to market? We investigate.
What do your intermediaries really think of you?
Max Hotopf
Unless you can answer that question, with some confidence, it is hard to see how you can get the most out of your channels to market. Yet many suppliers carry out such research only rarely, and most not at all.
Terminating distribution agreements: What every supplier should know
Paula Staunton
Make sure you know exactly what you are letting yourself in for if you decide to change your European distributors, says Paula Staunton, a partner at solicitors Osborne Clarke.
Building channel trust
Max Hotopf
‘Pushing water uphill’ sums up how it feels to work with mistrustful partners! Your best efforts are ignored; your time is filled with meetings that don’t go anywhere, and your initiatives founder. Trusting partners, on the other hand, are responsive; they spark off your ideas and meeting them is a joy.
Why American agreements don't work in Europe
Paula Staunton
Don’t fall into the trap of using American sales channel agreements in Europe, says Paula Staunton, a partner with solicitors Osborne Clarke…
Notification - curse or cure?
Paula Staunton
Notify the European Commission in advance that you are planning to restrict the supply of a product and you may avoid swingeing fines, writes Jenny Hayes, a solicitor with Osborne Clarke. At any rate, that is what the pharmaceutical industry believes. Is it right?
The big questions in account management..
Rosemary Wyatt
Rosemary Wyatt, a director of VIA International, outlines some of the big questions which all vendors should be asking themselves about account management - together with a few tentative answers...
Tackling the real issues
Max Hotopf
Slave, customer or employee? We asked a panel of big IT distributors how suppliers treat them. Their responses highlight the big issues in account management.
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