Channelinsight’s new channel sales management suite is for vendors, but what may be of interest to VARs is its Channelinsight DataConnect component.

The platform, available free to Channelinsight’s network of 5,000 partners and distributors, is comparable to electronic data interchange and tracks partner and end-user data on channel deals in the cloud while making inventory management simpler for vendors.

Randy Greer, network manager of Heartland Technologies, said extracting sales data and sending it to vendors in a timely and precise manner is no easy task and the suite makes it simpler for Heartland to process data.

“It’s time-consuming and not always accurate to send our weekly reports to HP on our own; there have been times where we missed an invoice and we wouldn’t get credit for it until the next payment period,” Greer said. “This [platform] helps us reduce labor and our accuracy has gone way up.”

Channelinsight CEO Mark Geene said his company is doing for channel sales what Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud does for direct sales.

“By keeping better track of these channel deals, vendors can calculate partner checks quicker, which allows them to get paid quicker,” Geene said. “The suite also simplifies data submission requirements by letting partners use one, standard form for each transaction.”

Let us know what you think about the story; email Pat Ouellette, Associate Editor, at pouellette@techtarget.com , or follow us on twitter.