Mobile Device
Management
VAR Channel
Tracking
How to Influence VARS to Recommend
Your MDM Software and Service
Henk Hoets MSS February 2012
MDM VAR Tracking
How to Influence VARS to Recommend Your MDM
Software and Service
VARs can be a valuable sales force, when they promote your company’s MDM (mobile device management) software and service.
VARs are your link to the end user - the enterprise IT head or corporate decision makers.
How do you influence VARs to recommend your MDM software and not your competitors’? How do you persuade VARS to recommend your MDM software and service more often? MDM channel managers face these questions daily.
Here is the good news. VAR channel tracking provides you with important information about VAR’s attitudes and behaviors about MDM software, services, and vendors. It helps you design effective channel marketing programs to beat your competitors.
The goal of this white paper is to explain VAR channel tracking, and how to use VAR channel tracking information to influence VARs to recommend your MDM software or service more often.
VARS play an important role in recommending and selling MDM software and service to enterprise decision makers.
Mobile Device Management - A Complex Purchase
for the Enterprise
Buying MDM middleware or renting it as a service (Mobility-as-a-Service) is complex. Most enterprise decision makers need help, including IT directors.
The MDM choices are complicated:
On-site deployment or mobility management as a service Design, Integration, and Support Services
Security Functionality Control Functionality
Device and Operating System Support
Provisioning, Configuring, Tracking, Decommissioning Applications Management
Services Management
Telecom Expense Management Policy & Rules Configuration Disaster Recovery and Backup
Diagnostic and Reporting Functionality Price Options
Adding more complexity for the enterprise decision maker, there are dozens of MDM vendors from which to choose. Also, BYOD behaviors are changing rapidly, as new and disrupting ‘consumerized’ technology enters the enterprise IT network. In addition, cloud computing charges forward, making inroads in the enterprise.
Because of the complexity of a MDM purchase, enterprise executives often turn to their trusted VARS for help.
VARs are influential in the sale and support of MDM middleware or service purchased by the enterprise. VARs are influencers and gatekeepers. VARs can be your friend or foe.
Enterprise decision makers require the assistance of VARs, when selecting MDM.
Understanding VARs
When developing your marketing plan, understanding your end-user is only half the equation. Understanding VARs is the other half.
VARs recommending your MDM software are valuable allies. They can reinforce your company’s image and product qualities with the right messaging and direct marketing programming from you. As loyal, expert collaborators, VARs can be your extended sales force. VARs ignoring or not recommending your brand hinder your
promotional efforts and sales goals. And in some cases, they even block your efforts to promote and sell your products.
Influencing VARs
How do you influence VARs to recommend and sell your MDM software and service effectively and frequently? How do you make them allies? There are four-steps.
First, you understand VARs’ behaviors about your MDM software and
your competitors’.
Which MDM software do they recommend? How often do they recommend them?
What is your share of recommendations? (move to third bullet) How often do recommendations convert to sales?
Second, you identify VARS’ attitudes about MDM vendors’ products,
image, and channel marketing programs that influence MDM
recommendations. The goal is to identify key drivers of recommendation for your MDM and competitors’ software and services.
Why do they recommend the MDM software they do? What specific MDM product features influence VARs to recommend?
VARs can be your friend or foe. Influencing VARs to recommend your MDM platform or service is an important channel objective.
Third, you assess your company against competitors in the channel.
How do competitors influence VARs?
How do your products, image, and channel programs compare to competitors?
Who is best in class in key recommendation drivers?
What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats? What are positioning opportunities in the channels?
Fourth, you optimize and deploy your channel programs, based on your
brand’s drivers of recommendations. With actionable intelligence in hand, you persuade VARs to recommend your MDM effectively.
Which VARs do you target?
Which channel programs work best?
What is the best spend of channel marketing budget?
VAR channel tracking gives you the answers to all four steps, channel by channel, region by region, country by country.
What is VAR Channel Tracking?
VAR tracking surveys VARs twice a year, building detailed, database about VAR channels.
With a robust quantitative program, VAR tracking surveys hundreds of VARs and their variants including MSPs, ISVs, and System Integrators. Like a sensitive early warning radar, VAR tracking picks up every impression that affects VARs’ attitudes and behaviors about MDM. It paints a detailed, dynamic map of the VAR channel.
In the fast changing category of enterprise mobility, timely and accurate channel intelligence is crucial to influencing VARs to recommend your MDM software and service.
VAR channel tracking is like a sensitive early warning radar that monitors VARs, and identifies key drivers of MDM recommendations.
How VAR Channel Tracking Helps You
VAR channel tracking helps you gain actionable information and
knowledge to influence VARs to recommend your software and service. VAR channel tracking helps you:
Accurately measures VARs perceptions about MDM vendors Understand changes in channel behaviors and attitudes Identify crucial opportunities and threats
Focus on outmaneuvering key competitors
Builds a comparative database of actionable information Plan, optimize and execute VAR channel programs and messages
Influence VARs to recommend your MDM software effectively and frequently
At its essence, VAR channel tracking reveals which channel marketing programs work and don’t work - and why. Understanding why or why not is the secret to effective channel marketing programming action. Replacing faulty channel assumptions and guesswork with channel facts and sophisticated statistical analysis transforms ineffective channel programs into effective, winning programs.
VAR channel tracking gives you timely and accurate actionable channel intelligence.
Product launches and channel programs are expensive affairs. A lot is at stake – money, reputations, and careers. If launches and programs are not performing as expected or are affected by competitors, you want to know and adjust as accurately and quickly as possible. VAR tracking puts this information at your finger tips.
What to Look For in a VAR Channel Tracking
Program
When carrying out a VAR tracking program, you’ll want a company that provides:
VAR channel tracking replaces channel assumptions with timely facts.
Implementing VAR channel tracking requires global
Marketing research expertise
o quantitative surveys question development o fielding oversight and project management o VAR random sampling design
o surveying hundreds of VAR respondents o professional statistical analysis
o advanced analytics capabilities Actionable Intelligence Reporting
o VARs’ MDM Share of Recommendations o MDM Product and Vendor Attribute Metrics o Marketing Program Metrics
o Key Driver (of recommendation) Metrics
o Best in Class Scorecards– your brand vs. competitors o Strategic positioning metrics
o Channel SWOT analysis – yours and competitors o Specific Channel Advice and Actions
MSS – Channel Tracking and Consulting Experts
MSS is a channel tracking and consulting firm. Its actionable channel recommendations are grounded in robust quantitative channel research. MSS studies influential gatekeepers in channels and prescribes action-oriented solutions to guide development of your channel marketing programs.
MSS has considerable experience in the wireless industry – devices, networks, and computing. Several major device manufacturers rely on MSS for channel recommendations and research. In addition, we have conducted hundreds of studies in over two dozen countries in 20
industries. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies rely on our channel studies. To learn more about VAR channel tracking, contact us for a
presentation. Henk Hoets, MSS
Vice-President, Advanced Influencer Studies 66 Fort Point Street,
MSS specializes in channel tracking and consulting. It has extensive experience in mobile telephones, OS, and networks, including B2B channels.
Several major mobile telephone manufacturers and dozens of Fortune 500 companies rely on MSS for actionable channel insights.
