Transforming Channel Partner Management in Building Construction Materials Industry

Feb 22, 2023

Manufacturing | 4 min READ

Rapid Globalization, changing economic landscapes, and the Industry 4.0 era are reshaping Building and Construction Materials companies. Innovative solutions to optimize supply chains and manufacturing processes assist businesses in combating exponential competition growth and changing consumer demands in the market.

Raj Pradhan

Practice Director

Construction and Building Materials Vertical

Birlasoft

Shobhit Joshi

Head of Delivery

Process Manufacturing Business

Birlasoft

While many organizations are turning to mergers and acquisitions to manage dynamic shifts in the market, channel partners can create significant value in company performance.

Growing Role of Channel Partners in Manufacturing Industry

A dynamic balance between channel partners and manufacturers is a key foundation for business success, growth, and profitability. The channel partners can offer several benefits for manufacturing companies, including:

Access to new markets

Channel partners help the manufacturing companies by handling sales in the secondary and tertiary areas that are typically away from the manufacturing plant. The Channel partners take responsibility for safe logistics, accurate deliveries, and reliable service for manufacturing companies that would otherwise require significant investment for market penetration and increasing market shares in distant areas.

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Reduced costs

Channel partners reduce costs by providing warehousing, distribution and logistics services, and marketing and sales support. These services eliminate the involvement of multiple partners and organizations, resulting in the least possible interruptions in business operations. Reduced costs can help manufacturing companies enhance business competitiveness, faster-to-market times and drive revenue growth

Enhanced customer service

Channel partners can provide valuable insights into customer preferences and feedback that can be used to inform future product developments. They have a direct understanding of the local market and greater insights and unique perspectives that manufacturers can utilize to enhance the customer experience. Additionally, they can help differentiate manufacturers from the competition by providing value-added services, such as product demonstrations, events, and after-sales service.

The organization's success relies on the capability and efficiency of handling and maintaining its relationships with its channel partners. By combining the latest technologies in Artificial Intelligence, data analytics, and demand forecasting, the manufacturers can increase their margins, efficiency, and relationships with their existing partners.

The challenges with channel partner management

While there are stakeholders involved in channel partner management, including the sales and marketing teams, customer support, finance, and logistics, only limited users get access to dealer visibility while they bring end products to markets for the consumers.

This lack of visibility creates three of the most significant challenges in the channel partner management system:

Transforming Channel Partner Management in Building Construction Materials Industry

1. Unplanned delays in the operations

For many organizations, the sales team is the single point of contact for the channel partners. These teams often need help to process orders, credit, and payment history whenever queries are raised from the dealers. The sales teams can be better used to increase and expand the existing dealer network than to service the existing customers. However, the burden on SPOCs and the involvement of multiple systems cause unplanned delays in operations resulting in bottlenecks and a lack of transparency.

2. Data complexities

The unplanned delays often create a prolonged order-to-cash cycle which is further delayed due to a lack of real-time proof of delivery systems (ePODs). The delivery data circulated in the system is scattered across multiple systems creating significant roadblocks in checking authenticity if any issues arise pertaining to the product, further constricting the data flow and resulting in latency while dispatching products.

3. Complications from multiple applications

The lack of real-time visibility into management can compel dealers to access multiple applications to track order placements, logistics, and delivery details. This entails a seamless integration into operations to gain real-time visibility into the logistics and delivery process and streamline the order-to-cash cycle.

Birlasoft Solution- intelliBridge

Birlasoft intelliBridge framework is designed to tackle the challenges and accelerate the pace of operations through channel partners. The intelliBridge is explicitly built for channel partner management and caters to the BCM industry as a standalone platform that can be implemented without an OEM solution. It can be hosted on open-source technology such as AWS, Azure, or any other cloud service. It offers a unique experience to channel partners across the web and mobile applications. The solution enables organizations gain competitive advantage using cloud and automation by delivering better sales management, channel partners finance, order management, improving customer experience.

The Benefits

intelliBridge can help organizations drive omnichannel experiences to enhance growth, improve decision making and enhance user-friendly experiences for channel partners. Additionally, companies can derive the following business benefits:

Transforming Channel Partner Management for BCM Industry

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Today, the customer journey is a continuous and dynamic process. Accordingly, the industry is shifting from atraditional transaction-based business model to a customer-focused digital transformation model to provide a seamless experience to its customers. Reimagine what can happen if your channel partners shift from low-quality experiences to consistent omnichannel digital experiences.

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