Since the rapid rise in e-commerce adoption because of COVID-19 outbreaks, multinationals are investing heavily in their online channel. However, a FrontierView survey of 142 multinational executives indicates that channel partners often lack the skills or capabilities to drive digital change and expand your online/offline channel strategy.
Many of the surveyed executives indicated that COVID-19 exposed systematic skill and capability gaps among their distributors. The urgency to address these issues is compounded by the growing prominence of digital channels, suggesting that businesses should re-evaluate their channel partners’ capabilities to avoid potential disruptions to their supply chains and ensure they are able to capture new demand opportunities.
So how do you ensure a successful transition between you and your existing offline partnerships? We recommend building two actions into your strategic plans for 2021:
- Consider re-evaluating your partners’ capabilities to identify potential gaps and drive channel improvements.
- Implement upskilling practices can help your channel partners alleviate some existing channel pressures and ensure smoother cooperation.
- Focus on offline/online channel integration to alleviate the rising pressures of channel transformation, particularly when dealing with cross-border trading issues.
The Online/Offline Channel Strategy Integration Survey provides insights on the experiences of multinational executives when it comes to offline/online channel integration and helps manage our clients’ expectations when it comes to their distributors. The report can help you to benchmark your own channel set-up against others, helping you identify potential channel inefficiencies.
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