Channel Champions Survey Most Extensive In Its 15-Year History

The 2005 CRN Channel Champions Survey was the most detailed and wide-ranging in the 15-year history of the project.

This year the survey was expanded from 25 to 28 product categories to include new technologies, while the number of vendors rated across the categories rose to 132, from 108 last year.

Quite simply, Channel Champions is the largest and most comprehensive survey of its kind in the industry. Nearly 1,500 solution providers responded to the survey, conducted between October 2004 and January 2005. They provided 8,100 vendor ratings across the 28 categories.

Solution providers in the survey were selected at random from CRN’s subscriber list and were carefully screened. Before being allowed to rate vendors in a particular category, solution providers had to affirm that they worked with the products in question and had a significant business relationship with the respective vendors.

Solution providers rated vendors on up to 15 criteria, including a set of five to six technical criteria and a set of nine channel criteria. The criteria were tailored to each of the product categories.

To obtain raw scores, solution providers rated their level of satisfaction with a vendor on each criterion on a scale of one to seven, with one meaning very dissatisfied and seven meaning very satisfied.

The ratings were then weighted. To determine the weight factor, solution providers were asked to rate the importance of each criterion on a scale of one to seven, and the results were normalized to a scale where one is average importance.

The raw scores were then multiplied by the weighting factors and converted to a base 1-to-100 scale.

The overall winner, or Channel Champion, in each category is the vendor with the highest average weighted score. The study also averaged just the technical criteria scores to come up with an overall technical winner and the channel criteria scores to name an overall channel winner.

CRN also determined three “special award” winners as follows:

The winner of the Best Channel Program Special Award went to the vendor with the highest average score for channel criteria across all the categories in which it was rated. The vendor also needed to win the top channel satisfaction ratings in at least three categories to be eligible.

The winner of the Best Technical Satisfaction Special Award was the vendor with the highest average technical rating of any vendor across all the categories in which it was rated. The winner also had to earn the top technical scores in at least three categories.

Finally, the Rookie of the Year Special Award went to a first-time Channel Champion with the highest overall score.