Research On Channel Service Model For IT Companies

Channel, as one of the most popular marketing coverage method in these days, has special means in competitive IT marketing. Service, as one of saleable product, is another hot word today. But how to have channel to do the service business in IT industry, it’s our focused point to talk about in this thesis.First of all, current channel service situation, including the channel service model of IBM and Cisco was introduced, and a SWOP analysis was made to give a clear picture on CSP(certified service partner) role and ASP(Authorized service partner) role. From the manufacturer point of view, there are five steps in channel service management system build up:Planning, Certification, Enablement, measurement and motivation, at the step of channel service strategy planning, Long term and short term strategy, Account division, Product division and Service categories were defined as five dimensions. At the step of channel service partner certification, the relative criteria and operation process need to considered. At the step of partner enablement, several types of methodologies were mentioned. At the step of channel service partner measurement, main management KPI was addressed in service selling and service delivery. At the step of behavior motivation, CSP and ASP were discussed from separate ways. After that, as a instance, channel service issues of S company were analyzed and addressed such question, suggestion were provided which proved our conclusion as below:1. There have two channel service model in IT industry: separated service selling and service delivery model and combined service selling and service delivery model.2. When we select the channel service strategy, we need to follow channel service guide, but we also need to keep flexible.3. Once the channel service strategy was defined, we need follow up it strictly.