Johannesburg, 27 Jun 2019
With the market becoming increasingly digital, channel businesses are facing unique pressures, and many are now looking for a reseller toolkit which assists them in this new digital environment.
A good reseller toolkit should contain centralisation, organisation and mobility as some of its key functions. Here's why.
Centralisation and organisation
There are a couple of advantages of housing multiple functionalities in one location; one is convenience. By grouping all the operational areas required to run channel operations together, toolkit users can easily switch between them without needing to worry about logging in and out of multiple systems. And with the functions being interlinked, data can flow unrestrictedly between them, with a corresponding positive effect on accuracy, transparency and visibility.
A centralised system is also usually one which is more secure. By keeping everything under one roof, so to speak, access can be funnelled through one login (single sign-on). Fewer logins are easier to track access to and keep a record of, as opposed to multiple logins into many separate systems across a business.
An increasingly important aspect of a centralised system is that of its value as a data collection platform. Customer data platforms (CDPs) are receiving increasing attention for their ability to aggregate customer data for analysis and insights-generation, and digital channel platforms are well adapted to act in this role for their customers.
CDPs are generally broader and aggregate their customer data from a wider set of sources than traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and with so many customers oscillating between phones, tablets, game consoles, desktops and laptops, many marketers are desperate for a unified view of the customer.
A reseller toolkit can be based on a digital channel platform, which has a natural advantage in that transactional data from all sources are aggregated within the platform, no matter the original source. Because all channel business transactions are conducted via the centralised platform, channel businesses using such platforms possess a natural, in-built CDP.
The transactional flow of data through the channel platform thus quickly builds up a valuable source of information to which analytics can be applied to uncover valuable strategic insights and sales opportunities, which business leaders and marketers can then use in their marketing and sales initiatives.
Mobility
A centralised digital reseller toolkit can then be supercharged by making it mobile, providing this platform to users anywhere, at any time.
Employing mobility throughout the business process and empowering staff to use mobile results in a business which is more agile at every step. Staff have more flexibility to make decisions and employ operational processes regardless of whether they’re in the office, at a client or away on a business trip, for example.
This has a knock-on effect on productivity. If company staff are enabled to conduct their business operations from anywhere, at any time, productivity should naturally climb. With no more downtime waiting to get back to the office, because that’s where the work tools are, employees can use this time productively instead.
Mobility can also encompass customer access to a business’s product, which in turn results in a better customer experience. If a customer can access a business’s system or product from anywhere, at any time, this has a major convenience benefit for the customer, improves their experience of the product and makes them more likely to repeat it, fostering loyalty over time.
Of course, by designing your product for mobility, you are designing it for use by the majority of the population. With everyone owning a mobile device these days, it only makes sense to cater for this massive market with a mobile-friendly product or service.
People also nowadays have an expectation to be able to engage with products and services on the go, via mobile. Any business which does not cater for mobile usage and interaction with its product or service is not only excluding a major chunk of its market, but is risking its image. People will view such businesses as old-fashioned and will potentially reject doing business or being identified with such companies on such a basis.
Through the various points above, hopefully we've been able to show that a good reseller toolkit can have a real influence within the modern ICT channel environment. Via a combination of centralisation, organisation and mobility based on an underlying software platform, a reseller toolkit can help you and your employees keep your reseller operations under control, wherever they may be.
Interested and want to know more?
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