Case Studies GE® Gains Better Visibility into Channel Sales

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	GE® Gains Better Visibility into Channel Sales

GE® Gains Better Visibility into Channel Sales

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries	Renewable Energy Utilities
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Predictive Maintenance Supply Chain Visibility Track & Trace of Assets
Services	Data Science Services System Integration
Challenge	When investing in partners to drive program performance, internet business-to-business (iB2B) channel suppliers like GE Automation rely heavily on point-of-sale (POS) data from partners to power everything from customer intelligence to sales compensation. The ability to collect and use this information is crucial to GE’s ability to operate with transparency and enable effective sales processes. With its data in disarray, GE struggled to calculate accurate sales commissions, spent weeks matching POS data to opportunities and lacked any information on sell-through for all but the largest partners. GE realized that to achieve their goals of increased visibility and better sell-through, they would have to perform an entire overhaul of their data processes. This overhaul would require cleaning up the customer data stored in GE’s Salesforce database to eradicate issues like duplicate data and inconsistent naming conventions, amongst many others. Read More
About Customer	GE Automation & Controls is a division of GE, the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming industries ranging from aviation to renewable energy with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE Automation & Controls offers turnkey solutions for full power plant automation, control and safety, as well as standalone industrial automation products for a variety of other industries. With 2,500 employees in 30 countries dedicated to customer success, this division of GE automates the processes that generate half of the world’s power. A third of major metropolitan areas rely on GE control systems to help provide electricity to citizens. GE Automation & Controls leverages hundreds of channel partners across the globe to get local inventory to customers and provide technical expertise on GE products. Read More
Solution	GE began by considering the benefits and costs of a manual data overhaul, but came to the conclusion that this approach would ultimately prove to be too time-consuming and would prevent GE from establishing an automated data management process. The other option was to find a specialized vendor with a solution built to automate the overhaul. This solution would also have to tackle the ongoing data management process. After evaluating multiple vendors and with a consensus from a number of internal teams across a variety of departments, GE selected e2open to drive its new channel data management (CDM) process. GE began its data integration and collection overhaul with e2open during the summer of 2016. As a key part of the integration, the data that e2open’s platform collected began flowing into GE’s Salesforce instance and was immediately integrated into its data warehouse. E2open’s technology officially went live with all GE channel partners on January 1, 2017. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Renewable Energy

Utilities

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance

Supply Chain Visibility

Track & Trace of Assets

Services

Data Science Services

System Integration

Challenge

When investing in partners to drive program performance, internet business-to-business (iB2B) channel suppliers like GE Automation rely heavily on point-of-sale (POS) data from partners to power everything from customer intelligence to sales compensation. The ability to collect and use this information is crucial to GE’s ability to operate with transparency and enable effective sales processes. With its data in disarray, GE struggled to calculate accurate sales commissions, spent weeks matching POS data to opportunities and lacked any information on sell-through for all but the largest partners. GE realized that to achieve their goals of increased visibility and better sell-through, they would have to perform an entire overhaul of their data processes. This overhaul would require cleaning up the customer data stored in GE’s Salesforce database to eradicate issues like duplicate data and inconsistent naming conventions, amongst many others.

About Customer

GE Automation & Controls is a division of GE, the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming industries ranging from aviation to renewable energy with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE Automation & Controls offers turnkey solutions for full power plant automation, control and safety, as well as standalone industrial automation products for a variety of other industries. With 2,500 employees in 30 countries dedicated to customer success, this division of GE automates the processes that generate half of the world’s power. A third of major metropolitan areas rely on GE control systems to help provide electricity to citizens. GE Automation & Controls leverages hundreds of channel partners across the globe to get local inventory to customers and provide technical expertise on GE products.

Solution

GE began by considering the benefits and costs of a manual data overhaul, but came to the conclusion that this approach would ultimately prove to be too time-consuming and would prevent GE from establishing an automated data management process. The other option was to find a specialized vendor with a solution built to automate the overhaul. This solution would also have to tackle the ongoing data management process. After evaluating multiple vendors and with a consensus from a number of internal teams across a variety of departments, GE selected e2open to drive its new channel data management (CDM) process. GE began its data integration and collection overhaul with e2open during the summer of 2016. As a key part of the integration, the data that e2open’s platform collected began flowing into GE’s Salesforce instance and was immediately integrated into its data warehouse. E2open’s technology officially went live with all GE channel partners on January 1, 2017.

Impact #1	E2open has provided GE with more transparency and better access to inventory data, which has reduced the cost of inventory in the channel, as well as the likelihood of stock-outs.
Impact #2	The e2open CDM platform allowed GE to start collecting inventory data from distributors, which made it possible to recommend products for distributors to order based on their improved view of similar distributors’ inventory levels.
Impact #3	Newly gleaned insights also enabled GE to avoid stock-outs by finding nearby distributors to ship products when normal distributors lacked inventory.

Impact #1

E2open has provided GE with more transparency and better access to inventory data, which has reduced the cost of inventory in the channel, as well as the likelihood of stock-outs.

Impact #2

The e2open CDM platform allowed GE to start collecting inventory data from distributors, which made it possible to recommend products for distributors to order based on their improved view of similar distributors’ inventory levels.

Impact #3

Newly gleaned insights also enabled GE to avoid stock-outs by finding nearby distributors to ship products when normal distributors lacked inventory.

Benefit #1	Reduced inventory spending and stock-out issues.
Benefit #2	Eliminated unnecessary administrative tasks for sales teams.
Benefit #3	Dramatically improved the speed, accuracy, and detail of channel partner reports.

Benefit #1

Reduced inventory spending and stock-out issues.

Benefit #2

Eliminated unnecessary administrative tasks for sales teams.

Benefit #3

Dramatically improved the speed, accuracy, and detail of channel partner reports.

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Overview

GE® Gains Better Visibility into Channel Sales

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit