Access More Funds, Spend More Funds, Strengthen your Multi-Vendor Co-op MDF Marketing Funds Management.
The majority of channel partners have large networks of vendors, most of which offer Co-op dollars or Market Development Funds (MDF). However, having access to multi-vendor marketing funds makes it difficult for channel partners to manage their marketing funds. To manage all their co-op MDF programs, partners use numerous spreadsheets resulting in excessive administrative work.
A Sirius Decisions report states that in order to help drive demand generation, channel organizations spend between 35-54% of channel marketing budgets on programs for their partners. Of these programs, 80-90% is funded through proposal-based Market Development Funds (MDF).
However, nearly 50% of available marketing funds go unused by channel partners. Vendors offer Co-op advertising dollars and market development funds (MDF) to their indirect sales channel. Vendors tend to make these funds available to help channel partners sell more products and create brand awareness. The majority of channel partners have large networks of vendors, most of which offer Co-op dollars or MDF. However, having so many vendors makes it difficult for channel partners to manage their funds. Marketing funds from multiple vendors have resulted in some of the funds to be left unused by partners.
What is Multi-Vendor Marketing Funds Management?
It’s the practice of actively managing marketing funds that come from multiple vendors. The best part is, there’s an efficient way to do it now.
Managing Multi-Vendor Marketing Funds Programs
On one particular occasion, we spoke with a large retailer in the home improvement industry. This retailer received Co-op dollars and MDF from over 500 vendors, and guess what?
They were managing these funds on over 500 separate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
In another case, we met with an industrial distributor that was eligible to earn funds from more than 300 different vendors. They admitted that they were only actively receiving funds from about 10.
It turns out, many channel partners have similar stories. Maintaining a separate spreadsheet per vendor has been the status quo when it comes to tracking MDF and Co-op Dollars.
Consequently, most partners are leaving large sums of money on the table. Partners don’t want to deal with the amount of time it takes to manage and obtain marketing funds from each of their vendors.
While web-based Co-op and MDF solutions have helped vendors accomplish this, their channel partners (resellers, retailers, and distributors) are still left with the burdensome task of tracking all of their funds individually. Inevitably, many of them have no idea how much is actually being made available to them. They also have no idea as to which funds are expiring. Therefore, things become increasingly difficult with multi-vendor marketing funds programs in the picture.
However, Computer Market Research has a web-based module for channel partners to manage their multi-vendor marketing funds.
Benefits of Computer Market Research’s Multi-Vendor Marketing Funds Management Module
For more than three decades, Computer Market Research has helped vendors manage the disbursement of their MDF and Co-op advertising dollars. Vendors have always been concerned with the ways in which their funds are being spent. They need to make sure that their channel partners are spending funds on activities that help drive demand or increase revenue.
One of the primary benefits of our new solution is that users can track their multi-vendor marketing funds from a single web-based platform, rather than tracking them on numerous spreadsheets. Other features and benefits of our Multi-Vendor Market Development Funds module are:
- Tracks marketing funds by customer, territory, or fund type including shows, ads, and training.
- Channel analytics reports by territory, reseller, product or distributor.
- Automatic Notifications
- Regulatory Compliance
To learn more about Multi-Vendor Co-op/MDF Management, download our white paper on best practices for managing funds from your vendors.
This is some really good information about how to manage to work with several different vendors. It does seem like you would need to get a something like a spreadsheet that will help you stay organized. It might be smart to hire a professional service to help you manage multiple vendors.