Partner Incentive Programs: Rewarding partners without breaking the bank

Keeping your company’s partners happy is one thing. Watching resources fly out the door without understanding the return? That’s something else entirely.

At Microsoft, a concern was growing at the C level that the company’s current rewards and performance framework for partners wasn’t meeting the needs of the business. Channel rebate and incentive programs weren’t centrally managed, accountability and decision-making power was scattered across business divisions and local implementers, and reporting was so fragmented that it was impossible to grasp exactly how it all worked.

Time for a change. Microsoft’s new general manager saw an opportunity to take charge of the situation, reduce the company’s financial exposure, and send a clear signal to the new COO that things were under control. He chose Touch to help.

Our familiarity with Microsoft’s partners—and the systems they had in place—allowed us to ramp up quickly, tackling the data at hand and creating a rewards and performance framework tailored to their specific needs. We established common performance measures for all incentives and connected spending more closely to a pay-for-performance model. We also established central management for the framework that made it easy to control and measure the effectiveness of rewards across channel categories, but also left flexibility for the field to execute locally relevant tactics.

Of course, our efforts involved people as much as systems. ¬Touch developed a rigorous project management program to help business owners not schooled in PMO processes contribute, and we worked with senior corporate leaders across divisions and geographies to drive accountability and ownership and ensure that the project was a collaborative effort.

With strong centralized control and a performance structure that increased partner satisfaction while reducing their dependence on rewards for profitability, the project has been a companywide success. Microsoft has seen significant cost savings in rebate and incentive spend, and the new COO sees a team providing real leadership for one of his company’s most valuable assets.

Touch can help.

If you have a channel or partner program that you suspect could be performing better, please contact us.
We’d love to help you.