There is a ton of investment in technology on the direct sales side. What technology do you need to manage your channel program?
By anticipating that the sales team involved with each channel partner also leverages similar technology to that of your direct team, you then have an opportunity to leverage all of those systems to consolidate their data in your Partner Relationship Management (PRM) system. This makes it push-button easy to generate forecasting reports you need most. This requires a well-developed PRM with APIs to most of the CRM systems channel partners prefer. Beyond that, your best investments are in technologies that can be shared among your channel partners, significantly reducing their cost of marketing automation and other pursuit-supporting systems.