After a two year moratorium, suppliers are starting to spend again on automating their transactions and relations with partners. So what are they spending on and how has their attitude changed?  And where is channel automation, the ability to automate many aspects of the relationship with partners, heading?

The last five years have been a baked Alaska experience for anyone selling channel automation tools and systems.  "Before 2001 everyone was on a buying spree. They went out and bought the latest, coolest, hottest things they could," recalls Sue Sokoloski, at ChannelWave, a US vendor of channel automation software.  "Then we had a freeze. For two years, companies bought practically nothing."

She sees a new attitude prevailing today.  At one level, people are far more hard-headed. "They say OK this is what we have. Is it worth keeping?  What extra things should we be doing and can we do it with the existing platform?’  Everything has to either cut costs or increase sales. And there is much more due diligence – people don’t just say ‘I want to automate this platform.’"

Companies are far less quixotic. Three years ago, senior management would spend a fortune on one worldwide platform, which would then be trumpeted as the global solution. Today, she says divisions and regions are often given autonomy. "It is all about coming up with practical solutions which work."

At another level, she sees a very clear trend for companies to combine partner relationship management software – systems which enable the user to communicate with partners, manage marketing development funds and carry out some profiling - with commerce systems which enable them to automate transactions with partners. "Today, we spend a lot of time helping companies to extract transaction data from their ERP solution and combine it with their PRM system." This way, of course, companies can build up long-term profiles of the purchasing history of each and every partner.