// MAP monitoring
Running a MAP Policy: What a Retailer Actually Has to Do
MAP programmes rarely fail because the policy document was written badly. They fail because nobody owns the work after it was issued. Detection is the cheap half. What happens in the week after a violation is found is where a programme is either real or decorative.
Here is what that work consists of.
One named owner with authority to hold an order
Somebody has to be accountable for the compliance rate by name. Ownership split between sales and marketing means a violation notice waits for a meeting.
That person also needs the authority to hold an order without escalating. A consequence that requires a vice president’s signature is a consequence that does not exist on a Tuesday afternoon.
A check cadence your dealers know about
Say how often listings are checked, how long a seller has to correct a violation after the notice, and what the next step is. Publish it with the policy.
A deadline the dealer already knew about is much easier to hold than one invented after the fact. It removes the argument about whether the seller had a fair chance.
The same treatment for your biggest account
This is the part that gets bent. The largest dealer violates, sales pushes back, and the notice quietly does not go out. Every dealer who noticed now knows what the real policy is.
Consistency here is worth more than any tool you could buy. It is also the only part of the programme that your compliant dealers can see from the outside.
Log what disputes actually say
A dealer that disputes a violation is usually pointing at something real. A price file that arrived late. A cost field read as a sale price. A bundle the policy never addressed.
Write down what they say. When the same dispute arrives three times, the policy has a gap, and closing the gap is cheaper than having the argument again.
Look harder after every price change
A new price file creates violations nobody intended. Distributors and dealers load the update on their own schedules, so the days after an effective date are when the compliance rate drops.
Warn before the window opens, check harder inside it, and judge the programme on how fast the rate recovers.
Report the rate, and report what did not get resolved
A report an owner can act on has the compliance rate and what moved since last month. It also lists the violations resolved, and the sellers who could not be identified or who ignored every notice.
A report that lists only violations found measures the monitoring. It says nothing about whether the policy is holding.