Partners act as an extension of a sales organization in a geography or a market where they are not active themselves. They do not just an extra revenue stream though; they are also representing the organization’s brand. In this context, Marketing Development Funds is a functionality where by partners can request funds to support their own marketing initiatives as these are off course to the benefit of the partner, but also to the benefit of the brand owner.
The supported process as described below is very organized using approval processes for all kinds of requests, but this allows for some fancy reporting too.
First we need a Budget
As partners will consumer marketing development funds of a budget, the entire process of sharing such funds with a partner starts with the channel manager making a budget available. The budget overview page allows us to track the processing of marketing development fund requests and their claims that have been logged against each budget.
Requesting Marketing Development Funds
Once budgets have been defined and activated, eligible partners can request funds against these budgets.
An approval process needs to be completed by the channel manager for each request before claims can be made against the linked budgets. Notice how the channel manager can also partially accept a request.
Notice how these MDF requests can also be logged against a business plan, as these marketing initiatives could be organized to support the business plan.
Reimbursements through Claims
Once a MDF request has been approved, to reimburse the expenses for which the request was made can be claimed by the partner by creating a claim in Oracle Sales Cloud against the MDF request, and ultimately against the budget linked to the MDF request.
Through an approval process again, the channel manager can reject or accept the claim, after which a reimbursement can happen.
