Welcome back, or if you’re joining us for the first time, welcome to our weekly series where we help brands navigate the world of MAP compliance more effectively. If you’ve been following along, you know that MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policies and their enforcement have a lot of moving parts – and can be a bit intimidating – but let us reassure you that there is a roadmap for success. The most effective strategies require high-quality data, support from various teams, company-wide transparency and selecting the right technology that meets your unique needs.
If you’re new to MAP enforcement, we know it can seem daunting, but we’re here to guide you along the way. We say it all the time, but we’ll say it again: well-orchestrated MAP strategies are essential for protecting your brand integrity and value.
As we’ve shared in previous posts, we believe that effective MAP monitoring and enforcement isn’t the responsibility of just one team or department – it requires a coordinated effort across the organization if it’s going to be done right.
Today, we’re digging into why cross-departmental collaboration is crucial for MAP success and sharing tips to help foster a MAP compliance culture that benefits everyone involved.
Why Cross-Departmental Collaboration Matters for MAP Compliance
Maintaining MAP compliance across a complex web of online retailers and marketplaces takes more than a policy – it takes a culture. Brands that get the best results with MAP compliance take an all-hands-on-deck approach to monitoring and enforcement. This means identifying the necessary teams and stakeholders within your organization to play their part. For most brands, this includes sales, marketing, legal, compliance, customer success, and even some parties outside your walls, like distributors and channel partners just to name a few. Here’s why collaboration is key:
Improved Data Visibility
Over the years, we’ve seen it time and again: each department has its own perspective, its own set of challenges, its own unique data requirement, and its own view on what MAP programs should entail.
For example, the sales team is deeply involved in the day-to-day retailer pricing, conversations, and trends, while marketing has a direct line of sight into promotions and brand positioning. When these teams work in silos, valuable data is kept separate, and enforcement suffers. In fact, Accenture reports that companies with integrated data-sharing see a 25% improvement in decision-making and response time. This makes data visibility essential for quickly responding to MAP violations before they become bigger issues.
Data sharing across departments helps provide the holistic view needed to understand where violations occur and to take proactive steps to enforce compliance across all channels.
Consistent Enforcement Across Channels
Enforcing MAP consistently is non-negotiable if you want to establish a fair playing field for all retailers and maintain strong relationships. Gartner research shows that 67% of brands struggle with consistent policy enforcement due to internal misalignment. Inconsistent enforcement often stems from isolated decision-making across departments, where some violations may get immediate attention while others fall through the cracks. One common practice that gets in the way of effective MAP enforcement is putting the onus on sales teams to send violation notices. This plays out poorly when the best customers get a pass on pricing violations while smaller accounts are treated with a heavier hand. Even the most well-intended salesperson can feel awkward applying pressure to the same contact placing the next order.
When teams collaborate, MAP compliance doesn’t have to rely on a single person or department. Instead, it becomes a team effort, with each department contributing to fair, balanced, and consistent enforcement across all channels.
Strengthening Retailer Relationships
Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of retailers, at all levels of the org, and have heard it countless times: retail partners want a stable pricing environment, and they value transparency and consistency in MAP compliance. When a brand’s internal teams collaborate to enforce MAP effectively, retailers feel supported. They feel reassured that “Chris in Sales” isn’t the one making the determination of which account is receiving violation notices and which is receiving special privileges. This mutual understanding builds trust, which Retail Touchpoints reports is essential for over 60% of retailers, who say they’re more likely to prioritize brands with consistent MAP policies. By working together, departments can deliver a clear message to retailers, highlighting the brand’s commitment to compliance and to keeping the partnership fair for everyone.
How to Build a MAP Compliance Culture Across Departments
- Establish a Cross-Functional MAP Task Force
One of the most effective ways to manage a MAP program is to set up a dedicated task force that includes representatives from sales, marketing, legal, and compliance. This group should meet regularly to discuss trends, tackle issues, and align strategies. This is a key time to examine which products, categories, retailers, marketplaces, or even days of the week are experiencing the most issues. It’s also a time to explore which partners are the best at adhering to your MAP policy. Some of the brands we’ve worked with in the past have a standing weekly meeting for this group, while others meet biweekly or once a month. However often you decide to meet, the task force structure helps create open communication, consistency, and quick action on violations.
In recent conversations with a consumer electronics brand, we were told that they hold monthly “MAP Roundtables” with leaders from each department to share updates and review any challenges in enforcement. Because the consumer electronics space is notorious for pricing violations, occasionally opaque distribution practices, and a good number of unauthorized sellers, the brand sees this communication as necessary to protect revenue and discuss any impact to the consumer that they might be seeing. This collaboration has not only improved overall strategy, but they’ve seen a tremendously improved response time and helped to prevent selective enforcement issues.
Regular, structured, cross-functional communication ensures that everyone stays on the same page and that MAP compliance is treated as a team effort, not a solo mission.
- Implement a Centralized Data Platform
Nothing slows down MAP compliance and presents barriers to enforcement like data silos, where critical data is spread across different systems and inaccessible to the teams who need it. By using a centralized MAP platform, brands can share valuable data with all relevant departments, ensuring that everyone has the same visibility into pricing and violations, but don’t take our word for it.
Forrester found that companies using centralized data platforms have a 30% higher operational efficiency due to improved data access and collaboration. This means that those brands that share a common source of truth will benefit most because there is no confusion around the datasets, metrics are shared wide and far, and all departments can coordinate efforts accordingly.
- Prioritize Transparent Communication with Retail Partners
The reality is that sales and marketing teams are often the ones interacting most with retailers, so they play a key role in ensuring MAP compliance is communicated effectively. Equipping these teams with accurate data and compliance standards helps them reinforce the importance of MAP during retailer discussions, building stronger, more transparent relationships.
When retailers trust that all of their competitors are having the same conversations, being treated in the same manner, and are not given special treatment, compliance is seen as a partnership, not a policing effort. This leads to relationships with retailers built on trust and relieves pressure from your revenue-generating teams.
One great example of transparency is a well-known apparel brand that provides its sales team with quarterly MAP violation reports for key retail partners. The sales team is welcomed…in fact, encouraged to share these reports with their retailer partners. This way, the sales team can address any recurring issues directly with retailers, emphasizing the brand’s commitment to compliance and shared goals.
Keep in mind, however, that your level of transparency must make sense for your unique business needs and challenges. In one example that may cause some brands to cringe, a well-known outdoor brand shares the last 3 quarters of MAP violations with all retailers and includes both the website name and seller name for the violating parties. This approach can be seen as potentially calling out certain retailers and may cause valued partners to take a defensive stance, but one can’t deny that it’s about as transparent as you can get.
How transparent you decide to be is up to you, but in our experience, two criteria need to be defined and agreed upon for effective MAP enforcement. The first is deciding what level of detail will be shared with retailers, and the second is staying true to that decision and sharing on a predetermined cadence, regardless of the circumstances. By doing so, you remove much of the subjectivity that can accompany poor MAP enforcement and keep the conversations purely objective, based on data and findings.
- Use Data Analytics for Proactive Compliance
With the right MAP solution, brands can not only see violations as they occur but also get ahead of MAP violations by identifying patterns and trends that may indicate where and when compliance issues are likely to occur. Proactively monitoring these patterns allows brands to tackle issues before they escalate.
A consumer electronics customer uses data from the previous two years to monitor MAP compliance trends and has learned to spot problematic sellers and periods and to proactively message their retailer partners prior to high-risk times like holiday sales periods. This proactive approach has helped them manage pricing more effectively during the busiest sales seasons as well as stave off calls from frustrated retailers who are unable to compete with a retailer who has chosen to violate MAP.
Using data analytics for proactive MAP management turns compliance from a reactive process into a strategic advantage, helping brands maintain their pricing integrity year-round.
Conclusion
MAP compliance is no longer just a single department’s job; it’s an organization-wide effort from the interns to the C-suite. Brands that embrace cross-departmental collaboration see better consistency in enforcement, stronger retailer relationships, and more proactive compliance management. By creating a cross-functional task force, centralizing MAP data, and fostering transparent communication with retailers, brands can transform MAP compliance into an integral part of their culture.
In the end, when MAP compliance is a shared responsibility, it becomes a strategic asset, protecting brand value, ensuring sustainable growth, and removing much of the frustration that comes with policing partners who are there to drive sales. With the right approach, tools, and commitment to cross-departmental collaboration, brands can build a MAP compliance culture that benefits everyone.
