Client Reference 3Com MDF Usage Study

Getting partners to use marketing funds is an industry-wide issue. bChannels ran research to help 3Com improve their fund management processes to address this.

The Challenge

Like many vendors, 3Com were facing challenges in getting partners to effectively use the joint marketing funding it makes available. They were finding a high percentage of funds unused by partners and expiring.

They needed to identify whether this was an issue around the programs available, the management process or the unwillingness of partners to invest and whether any other vendors had cracked this problem.

bChannels services for 3Com

bChannels ran a series of interviews with partners in UK, France and Germany to identify why they had not spent their accrued funds. This feed-back was balanced with a benchmarking study of the rules and programs used by competitors and potential best practice IT vendors.

Based on this research, bChannels proposed changes to the MDF process to increase adoption.

Why this matters to 3Com

It became clear that, although there some partners that were never going to use funding, there were others that, if the programs available for funding were more relevant to their needs, would invest more.

3Com therefore revised the rules around who could get funds, what they could be used for and how unused funds could be re-invested.