HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR DETAILS THE DISCIPLINES OF CHANNEL MANAGEMENT
New Book Offers Fresh Approach to Designing and Managing Channels for the Long Term
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BOSTON - Of all the elements of a company’s marketing strategy, distribution channels are perhaps the hardest to change. Although most are outdated and unwieldy – serving neither customers nor channel partners adequately – marketers are often hesitant to transform their distribution channels, preferring to make do with what they have. This reluctance is driven mainly by the potential uncertainty that accompanies the changeover. The possibility of a loss of sales revenues, for example, or of an increase in channel conflicts drives the company towards the safety of inertia.
Harvard Business School professor and marketing expert V. Kasturi Rangan believes that “channel stewardship” is the answer to refreshing and realigning distribution channels to best serve the customer and the company’s bottom line. In his new book, Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy: The Three Disciplines of Channel Management (Harvard Business School Press), Rangan illustrates how any member of a distribution channel can adopt this role and learn how to shape an effective, constantly evolving, and mutually beneficial strategy.
Channel stewardship, according to Rangan, requires a laser-like focus on the customer and a rigorous study of how the various partners contribute to the value chain. It is a new way of designing and managing distribution channels to enable the transformation to take place in an evolutionary way.
Using in-depth case studies of companies such as Cisco Systems, Nike, and Charles Schwab, Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy outlines three disciplines that companies must master in order to navigate the complex distribution environment successfully:
- Map the industry channel. As the first step in the process, mapping provides a broader view of what other companies in an industry are doing. Mapping helps reveal gaps in your own channel system, as well as identify opportunities and threats your organization should recognize.
- Build and edit your channel continuously to best serve customers. This allows you to create a value chain that puts customer needs first. Building and editing is a continuous process that helps prioritize needs, benchmark key competitors, and evaluate channel options to find the best fit for customer needs.
- Align and influence your channel value chain to ensure that all parties reap appropriate rewards. This final step relies heavily on transparency, trust, and open dialogue between all the players along the value chain. Alignment ensures that all the partners are working together towards a common goal of servicing the end user.
“Read the first chapter of this eye-opening book, and you will want your company to map its channels, rebuild them, and realign them,” said Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “This book’s powerful frameworks and rich company examples will change your company’s perspective from channel management to the more powerful concept of channel stewardship.”
Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy is available for purchase online:
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=7669.
About the Author
A member of the Harvard Business School faculty since 1983, V. Kasturi “Kash” Rangan is the Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing and serves as co-chair of the School’s Social Enterprise Initiative. He is the coauthor of several other books, including Going to Market and Business Marketing Strategy. His business marketing and channels research has appeared in management publications such as Journal of Marketing, Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Sloan Management Review, Journal of Retailing, Management Science, Marketing Science, and Organization Science.
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located in Boston and offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. With a faculty of more than 200 distinguished scholars, the School is dedicated to educating leaders who make a difference in the world. Its core focus is to shape the practice of business, build enduring knowledge, and effectively communicate important ideas. Harvard Business School is the world’s largest producer of business cases, a method of teaching pioneered by the School in the 1920s.