So why is the category of& channel marketing software growing and why is it needed? And, who should consider deploying it? Before we answer these questions in detail, let’s look at the underlying factors that are driving the evolution of this new category.

Over the past two decades, the Internet has become not only a medium for content distribution but also a utility that – just like electricity, water, air conditioning, or heating – keeps an organization running. Today the Internet is a utility that allows businesses to distribute content and people to communicate, but it also has become a medium for distributing software that automates business workflow. Software that used to run on our desktops gradually moved to centralized servers and, over the past decade, outside the organization to the cloud. This trend accelerated due to the abundance of bandwidth and storage and the evolution of web services platforms that can run software in the cloud, eliminating the need to install programs onsite.

A brief summary of the evolution of enterprise automation software looks like this:

Amazon is first a software company, and secondarily a reseller of products and services. We have seen businesses like bookstores – for example Borders in the U.S. – going out of business, simply because they did not compete in the arena of digitized content and distribution of goods and services via Internet process automation. The same thing is happening with all companies that are not adopting digital sales and marketing processes using end-to-end automation, and the same logic applies to the recent evolution of automated channel marketing software. If you are selling direct, the chances are you have already automated your sales and marketing processes, or are in the process of doing so. Otherwise, you risk going out of business, just like old-school bookstores. However, if you are selling indirectly, through a channel, it’s possible that you may have not considered automation yet, simply because it is a new and rapidly evolving segment.

So what is the state of the channel marketing automation software industry today, and where is it going? Here is a brief summary.

Channel marketing automation software is at an exciting phase in its development. Even in its early days of evolution it already has produced significant cost savings through streamlining of process steps, elimination of wasted labor, and freeing up marketing and sales funds to invest in strategic growth areas. It will continue to do so on an even greater scale in the years to come.