The most logical way to begin is to align the automation needs with the business needs of the organization. But before we talk about that alignment, let’s take a step back and take a look at the overall partner lifecycle management, which is independent of channel maturity, but highly dependent on the company’s ability to drive sales through a channel network. Partner lifecycle management has five basic steps: partner recruitment, partner onboarding, partner training, partner enablement (marketing and sales) and partner management. Let’s go through these areas step-by-step and see how channel marketing automation can help in each area.

Once you have identified and understood these five key areas related to channel marketing automation, the next step is to think about how you want to deploy automation in your organization. There are a couple of key factors to consider. First, you need to recognize that your partner tier management will likely vary across different geographies and across the different verticals that you serve. For example, you may have specialty VARs for supporting healthcare, retail, finance, insurance or real estate. Your tier management will probably be very different from one region to another, because these verticals vary considerably by region. So it’s important to carefully think through how your channel tier varies, and therefore how your channel management approach will vary, in different regions around the world. This will have a big influence on the sequence you choose for channel marketing automation deployment. We’ve written about this specific topic (why channel management automation varies by global region) before, and it’s definitely worthwhile to take into consideration before you undertake a global deployment.

Another important factor to think about as you decide on sequencing your channel marketing automation deployment is the overall maturity of your channel program. If you don’t have a structured partner recruitment program already in place, it may not make sense to move up automation into partner recruitment and onboarding. On the other hand, if you do have training but don’t have a structured certification program in place that relates to partner performance management, it may make sense to start with what you have, automate it and make it work before you start defining additional process steps such as recruitment, onboarding, management or different pieces of enablement. Generally, the best place to start is with what you have today—what is working today—and focus on making it more efficient. This approach creates less inertia in the organization as it undergoes the sometimes-difficult process of adopting new technology and a new platform. It also gives you clear visibility and metrics about an area you know well, ultimately creating the foundation for defining process steps that are actually missing or not clearly defined, and then automating them in a sequential order that makes sense. My point is that it’s essential to think this through in a structured way to achieve success in channel marketing automation.

If we step back and look once more at the core areas for deploying channel marketing automation, we should begin to recognize the importance of understanding unified partner management and deploying automation in stages. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It doesn’t make much sense to try to automate the channel marketing process end-to-end all at once. Instead, adopting a one-to-three year vision of your automation project will give you time to take a careful, structured approach and make it a reality for your organization. Keep in mind that size matters—the smaller the organization, the faster you can automate and the more control you can exert over the process. The more revenue that’s flowing through the channel, the more likely that multiple business units and product lines are involved, as well as multiple functions across different geographies—all adding to the complexity of deployment and slowing things down. That’s why it makes sense to pick pieces to automate, especially in larger organizations. Automating everything end-to-end makes much more sense for smaller organizations, but even then the deployment is likely to work best in carefully considered stages.

Finally, once you have carried out your automation strategy that may last one to three years, don’t neglect to reassess your progress and the alignment of your automation strategy with your business needs on an annual basis. This step ensures that the channel marketing automation becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Aligning channel policies, programs and the channel marketing automation platform on a continuous basis will not only give you results, but also enhanced visibility and control, which are essential in a highly chaotic channel management environment.