Partner Compass: vendor strategy overview
How the Health Check, PPPC scoring and four-quadrant classification turn a sprawling vendor list into a 12-month plan
A guided overview of Partner Compass: the six-domain Health Check, how every vendor and distributor relationship is scored, how the four-quadrant classification decides what to invest in, sustain, bridge or retire, and what the 12-month roadmap looks like in practice.
- The six domains the Health Check scores, and why most partners never measure them
- PPPC scoring applied to every vendor and distributor relationship
- Four-quadrant classification: True North, Strong West, East Reach, EOL
- What the 12-month roadmap contains - MDF calendar, deal-reg cadence, tier targets
Partner Compass is vendor strategy as a service. This overview walks through how a partner's vendor portfolio moves from an unranked list of relationships to a scored, classified portfolio with a plan attached to each vendor.
It starts with the Health Check: eighteen questions across six domains - portfolio composition, MDF utilisation and rebate stacking, deal registration discipline, programme positioning, co-marketing velocity, and distributor leverage. Each answer is scored against published channel benchmarks rather than opinion.
Every vendor and distributor relationship is then scored on PPPC and plotted on a four-quadrant map of stack fit against market fit. The quadrant a vendor lands in points to a disposition: invest, sustain, bridge or retire. That is the decision most partners defer indefinitely.
The output is a 12-month roadmap: an MDF claim calendar, a deal-registration cadence, tier-advancement targets for the priority vendors, and quarterly reviews to keep the plan honest. Where automation moves the needle, Cotillion CORE picks up the operational half.