Introduction Honeywell’s Global Channel model consisted of collecting millions of sales transactions from the company’s 100+ distributors, and direct sales channels. The data came in multi-lingual and multi-file formats, from which it was very difficult to effectively extract meaningful information. After examining the business issues, Honeywell decided that a single repository solution was needed. They also required this solution to fulfill three objectives:

• Better manage global channel partners

• Deliver high quality channel data

• Increase channel sales

As a welcome by-product of achieving these goals, the company experienced impressive results in their sales data processing operations.

Global Channel Model Like many companies, Honeywell operates in a multi-tiered channel sales model. Some sales are direct to large customers, other sales go through distributors, and other sales opportunities filter through value added resellers (VARS). Honeywell’s customers can buy through one or all of these channels.

Best Practices for Using Data to Drive Channel Sales Growth

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Over 70% of Honeywell’s revenue comes from their multi-tier distribution sales channel. Honeywell has over a hundred distributors that submit data, with almost 90% of them being outside of the United States. As a result, Honeywell needed to solve a fundamental business visibility issue that resulted from large amounts of data coming in from a variety of sources, in different formats, with different quality standards. The remaining direct revenue includes extremely large deals with very large, multinational customers, such as UPS.

Business Needs Honeywell scaled their business needs down to the following four requirements. They were seeking:

• The ability to integrate Salesforce.com for channel visibility to 250 sales reps

• The capacity to process data quickly with little human intervention

• The sophistication to display up-to-date reporting quickly and easily

• The ability for global partners to report using partners’ preferred methods

Honeywell was faced with determining the best way to show data to their sales reps. Since reviewing past sales data is not an ideal use of time, Honeywell wanted to provide reps with data quickly, efficiently and in an easy to read fashion. Also, in order to verify that all data was formatted properly, Honeywell determined that an automated solution was needed. However, that solution had to have the inherent ability to perform tasks quickly and without human intervention. Honeywell also needed to know that their reporting partners were providing complete sales data. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, was making sure there was a single repository for cleansed point of sale and direct sales data.

Best Practices for Using Data to Drive Channel Sales Growth

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Best Practices for Using Data to Drive Channel Sales Growth

Channel Solution Overview The chart below gives a comprehensive look at the solution that Honeywell decided upon.

Honeywell’s POS and inventory data comes straight from their global distributors, across multiple regions. Distributors combine their channel data with their direct sales data. The data is then enriched with additional information from reference files, global pricing stats and product catalogues and eventually matched with their customer master. Honeywell then takes this data and does following:

• Special Price Requests: Channel partners often require special price discounts to beable to win a deal. Honeywell needs to be able to validate and calculate theappropriate discounts.

• Serial Number Matching: Honeywell links serial numbers back to service contracts,calculates a tax rate and to incentivize their sales reps. The only way Honeywell couldproperly incentivize their reps was to have accurate visibility into their partner data.

• Product Matching: By automatically matching product data, Honeywell can clean uppoor quality data they receive from multiple distributors and render it usable forbusiness

decisions. For example, if a distributor adds a suffix to a SKU, this is fixed automatically.

• Account Matching: Honeywell is able to use automated account matching andcompany hierarchies to roll up transactions so that the correct salesperson receivescredit.

• Inventory Processing: By controlling the inventory of their distributors, Honeywellcan more effectively control their inventory internally.

Objective #1: Global Partner Management Honeywell needed an effective automated solution for quick and easy implementation for their existing partners. It was necessary to accept partner data in whatever format they provided and develop it into a new global solution. Their number one objective was to create an effective and efficient global partner management solution. Honeywell learned that one of the key issues related to effective data collection was for partners to trust their vendor. That put the burden on Honeywell to let their partners know what they were going to do with the data they received as well as use the data for the benefit of all parties involved. Honeywell also needed to automate their POS data collection. While EDI is the best approach, many channel partners do not submit data using EDI. So Honeywell

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Best Practices for Using Data to Drive Channel Sales Growth

chose Channelinsight’s DataConnect™ product, which automatically extracts POS data from channel partners in a variety of formats, standardizes and enriches the data, then consistently delivers improved channel data back to them. Along with making it easy for partners to submit their data, Honeywell now receives actionable channel data in a format they can use. A best practice to ensure prompt data delivery from partners is not to force the use of an existing data template. Requiring partners to use an existing template may result in a lack of data submission. If partners can submit data in any format, they are more likely to submit their data in a timely fashion and Channelinsight’s DataConnect makes that possible. Another best practice is to set up automated reminders to ensure that data submissions come in when expected. By sending automated reminders, partners are informed via email when they should submit data. Honeywell also verifies the accuracy of the data they receive. They can measure the quality and timeliness of the data and use scorecards to let their partners know how they are performing. This allows Honeywell to offer incentives to partners who provide them with timely, complete and accurate data and it encourages other underperforming partners to improve.

Objective #2: High Quality Channel Data Honeywell’s next objective was to ensure that they would be working with high quality channel data. As a result, they implemented an automated channel data management system that replaced their legacy solution, which relied on Excel spread sheets, Access databases and human resources. The new automated solution was extremely reliable, and did not require extensive manual manipulation and resulted in a reduction of human resources. Honeywell needed a solution that could handle millions of POS, inventory and direct sales transactions and they needed a single-source repository where they could be confident that the data was accurate. The goal here was not to have perfect data; the goal was to have “usable” data. To obtain quality usable data, you need an automated process that validates all incoming data against internal reference data and industry directories. Additionally, best practices state that exceptions should only be handled once. Therefore you should use data validation rules that look for incorrect data, such as flagging data volumes that are too high or too low in order to automatically catch data anomalies.

It is best to use an application that is always learning from itself, meaning that the same errors aren’t handled repeatedly. By doing this, you will be working with the best possible data instead of incomplete and/or inaccurate data submitted by your channel partners. Once the data has gone through these processes, it can be used for downstream use.

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Best Practices for Using Data to Drive Channel Sales Growth

Objective #3: Increase Channel Sales Honeywell’s third objective was to grow their reporting partner base and ensure that they were working with the right channel partners. Obtaining numbers and data is one thing; however a benchmark by which to compare the data is a necessity. There is a need to establish benchmarks for your partners and compare their actual sales against them. If you embed these benchmarks into your business intelligence solutions, you can easily see when a partner is not hitting their targeted number. By providing partners with regular and frequent feedback, you can strengthen their performance and your relationship. Honeywell is also always looking for new resellers and partners. One of the best places to look is with their distributor partners. But many resellers and new customers can also be found in your POS data if it is rolled up across geography and distributor. It is easy to identify resellers who are doing a job well selling a particular product that could be good candidates to become a certified partner.

Honeywell uses the Channelinsight Directory™ to enhance their POS with SIC code and company classification so they can identify what kinds of resellers they have and which industries those resellers are focused on. This ensures that Honeywell is not rolling products out to partners that don’t sell to a certain customer base. Segmenting point-of-sale data is a huge advantage when using analytics to see what’s selling in a specific segment, and enables the creation of custom incentive programs for each vertical market.

Automatically closing the loop on deal registrations is also a big advantage when it comes to forecasting. By automating this process, Honeywell knows which large deals have closed without looking them up and can get a much better sense of how each quarter will progress. To accomplish this, they determine which marketing programs are creating leads and then follow those leads all the way through the POS. After a deal is made, Honeywell can determine when the product actually shipped. On average, they get 80% to automatically match with the deal registration I.D. or the end customer and the SKU. The remaining 20% of POS data is exception handled to get a complete, closed-loop view of their leads, all the way through shipment. By automating this process, they get a much better view into which marketing programs are working and which resellers are actually closing deal registrations, not just creating them.

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Channel Sales Results Honeywell achieved positive results in eight major channel sales areas including reduced processing times, improved product/price match accuracy and a 10% increase in quarterly sales bookings as seen in the chart below:

Honeywell was also able to triple the number of transactions processed in 2013 and decrease their data processing time from days to real-time. Making sure they constructed a fully automated solution and employing best practices was the only way Honeywell could process millions of transactions annually and provide all the required analytics with a staff of less than 10 people.

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Best Practices for Using Data to Drive Channel Sales Growth

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