Navigating the complex and diverse landscape of the Indian market poses a unique challenge for companies relying on distributors to manage their supply chain. Establishing connections with new distributors requires a well-defined onboarding strategy to ensure a smooth and efficient process, laying the foundation for successful relationships from the outset.
In this blog, our exclusive focus revolves around providing invaluable insights to expedite the onboarding of distributors.
Distributors Onboarding Process Explained
The distributor onboarding process is a critical phase that varies across organizations. Despite this variability, certain fundamental steps remain consistent, outlining a standard protocol for a comprehensive distributor partnership journey.
- Initiating Partnership: Understanding the Distributors
The onboarding process begins by integrating distributors into the organization's database, aligning them with internal policies, and ensuring compliance with regulatory norms. This phase involves assessing the distributor's business acumen, checking for conflicting product promotions, investigating financial soundness, and ensuring the presence of essential infrastructure. - Collecting Required Business Documents
A streamlined onboarding process requires collecting essential business documents, minimizing risks, detecting fraud, and meeting compliance requirements. This checklist includes ownership documents, tax information, NDA, insurance policies, past service track records, subcontractor agreements, financial records, certifications (especially in the food industry), regulatory compliance details, business licensing, and banking information for payments. - Rigorous Evaluation: Verifying Distributors' Documentation
Critical documents provided by distributors undergo meticulous scrutiny by the channel management and finance teams. This evaluation, including GST IN details, bank statements, and audited financial statements, is crucial for determining the suitability of the distributor for collaboration. - Establishing Mutual Understanding: Conveying Requirements and Expectations
The sales team plays a pivotal role in acquainting prospective distributors with the organization's operational procedures, expectations, and requirements. This phase ensures compliance with organizational policies and sets the stage for impactful outcomes. - Facilitating Integration: Introduction to Network and Software
Upon successful approval, the sales team orchestrates the seamless integration of distributors into the organizational network. This involves deploying necessary software onto the distributor's system and providing a comprehensive overview of operational protocols. - Implementation & Routine Monitoring
Aligning on implementation processes, communication across departments, providing necessary details for invoicing and approvals are crucial aspects of the onboarding process. A structured approach ensures compliance, risk mitigation, and efficient collaboration.
The Role of actyv.ai in Streamlining Onboarding
Identifying and onboarding distributors traditionally consumes up to 45 days, resulting in lost opportunities and revenue. actyv.ai presents a definitive solution, streamlining and expediting the onboarding process for channel partners. With features like a digital document vault, instant fraud verification, video KYC, workflow-based approvals, and e-contracting, actyv.ai ensures a swift and secure onboarding experience.
The innovative actyv Score, a proprietary algorithm, analyses over 90 factors from documents such as GST returns, business turnover, vintage, IT returns, and financial/non-financial data correlation. This scoring system provides a comprehensive business health report for channel partners, enabling informed decision-making.
In conclusion, mastering distributor onboarding in just six days becomes achievable through a structured approach, leveraging innovative solutions like actyv.ai. Automation emerges as a game-changer, enhancing productivity, efficiency, and speed in the distributor onboarding process. A centralized platform accessible to both parties ensures smooth collaboration, ultimately pre-empting obstacles and propelling progress in distributor management.
