^{Ashish Shete, Zyme}

The channel data management (CDM) industry is rapidly growing as today’s resellers and service providers struggle to keep track of end customers that work in multiple verticals, are at various stages in the buying journey and may subscribe to different variations of a channel partner’s suite of offerings. Just like every other industry, the channel is hungry for data that drives meaningful business outcomes.

CDM provider Zyme today launched the latest version of software to support what it calls the New Smart Channel. According to Ashish Shete VP of Products and Engineering at Zyme, at any given point of time, the channel has $1.5 trillion of inventory. “In many cases what happens is that these manufacturers are flying blind,” says Shete. “There are many companies that are getting data from their channel partners once a month. That may be too late.”

By improving visibility, by giving access to better data to both the manufacturer and the channel partner, Zyme believes the channel can achieve savings of more than $150 billion in terms of reduced inventory, and an additional $200 billion in terms of accurate and timely incentive payments.

Zyme cloud platform 3.0 provides channel partners with analytics dashboards and integration with end user’s business systems to generate actionable insights from raw partner data. Shete says that Zyme processes more than 50 million transactions per month currently, and he projects that volume will double to 100 million transactions per month by the end of the year.

^{Zyme cloud platform Inventory Dashboard}

^{Zyme cloud platform Territory Dashboard}

One of the most persuasive selling points of Zyme is that VARs and other channel partners can input data in any format and any transmission mode, eliminating many of the barriers that frustrate the data analysis process.

Zyme’s primary areas of focus are e-commerce, channel partner incentives and the Internet of Things (IoT), all areas that Shete says show huge growth potential.

“Even in this era of data-driven decisions supported by ERP and CRM systems, companies leave a lot of money on the table by failing to leverage comprehensive and up-to-date channel data,” says Gerry Murray, Research Manager at analyst firm IDC. “From channel marketing to incentive payments to inventory management, global enterprises have the opportunity to create enormous value by integrating decision-grade channel data into a wide range of business processes.”