REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 18, 2015) - A recent survey conducted by Cypress Consulting reveals significant dissatisfaction among technology manufacturers' sales and marketing staff members with the capabilities of their current IT systems for channel management.

The report is available here: http://bit.ly/1HDoZ0u. Editors may also request a copy via email to dwright@mbipr.com

In responding to questionnaires and in-depth interviews, companies like Cisco, Dell, HP, and Juniper reported their confidence in CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), PRM (Partner Relationship Management) and other existing channel tools to be in the middle-to-low range, pointing to insufficient means to reconcile data, manage channel information flow, validate partner incentive programs, and make sound business decisions.

Key findings in the Cypress Consulting report include:

• Vendors are forced to make critical decisions based on inadequate analysis.
• Reseller partners upon whom vendors rely often fail to provide accurate reports.
• Data integrity challenges are costing millions in increased costs and missed sales.
• Time and money are being wasted trying to reconcile reports with resellers.
• Partner data inaccuracies, such as overstated deal sizes, duplicate opportunities, and unreported wins, create lack of confidence in pipeline reports, and quarter-end revenue surprises.
• Incentives and rebates are tied up in wasteful disputes.
• False intelligence from inaccurate channel data leads to suboptimal business decisions and wasted resources.

The report paints a picture of misaligned and unclear information flow in the pipeline: "Even vendors that have [access to] trusted data reported lacking dashboard and business intelligence tools to quickly analyse information. As a result, they often create large and unwieldy spreadsheets to analyse sales results." One channel sales respondent added, "We often get accurate information after it's too late to make the right decision."

"The results of this survey are not a big surprise," said Steve LaPedis, VP of Marketing for Zyme (www.Zyme.com), the world leader in Channel Data Management. "It is easy for functional departments like finance, marketing, operations, and sales to be adversely affected. Professionals are always busy, they get rushed, and communication suffers. The cost of unravelling conflicting or incomplete data from the channel quickly shows up on the bottom line, and business moves too quickly for the mistakes to be easily corrected."

The report concluded that "given the latest new capabilities of CDM providers, such as Zyme, and the costs associated with inaccurate channel data, we believe network equipment vendors have a responsibility to their shareholders, staff, and customers to expand their use of modern CDM solutions to improve business performance."

The survey accentuated a need for an intermediary to step in and manage channel data proactively. Even with large-scale deployment of CRM and ERP, gaps and inadequacies in both human and data activity have revealed the need for a specialist quality assurance expert.

Zyme, the leader in the rapidly expanding discipline of Channel Data Management (CDM), delivers technology that simplifies partner POS and inventory collection, and validates data before integrating it into vendors' IT systems. This results in customers achieving the intelligence needed to accelerate channel sales, improve ROI from channel programmes, and make more timely and informed decisions from accurate, near-real-time channel data.

About Zyme
Zyme is the global leader in the emerging channel data management (CDM) space, empowering the New Smart Channel™, a proven approach to creating visibility to actionable knowledge that manufacturers need to accelerate partner sales and optimize marketing program ROI. Zyme's flexible, cloud-based offerings facilitate enterprise-grade decisions by responding to real-time, granular channel intelligence. Benefits include better-targeted MDF, co-op, and rebate programs, plus improved segmentation. Zyme replaces outdated, ad-hoc systems with a state-of-the-art, cloud-based platform, data steward services, and a worldwide channel directory of more than 900,000 partners for guaranteed database quality, support for a wider range of formats, and best practices that enhance reporting compliance. Industry leaders like Dell, VMware, Fujitsu, Plantronics, Xerox, Symantec, SanDisk, GoPro, and Seagate rely on Zyme. Headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA, Zyme has offices in Texas, Pennsylvania, China, India and the UK. For more information, visit www.Zyme.com.