Bring Insight and Manageability with Impartner PRM

Did you know that "more than 60 percent of the B2B revenue that flows through indirect channels comes from the top quintile of partners" for most companies? If you are not reaping the benefits of this stat, you probably should look into a partner relationship management (PRM) solution that works best for you. With different strategies, capabilities, and methodologies, PRM is the next wave of innovative channel management for improved communication. Fast-growing, modern companies are turning to PRM to optimize the performance of their partner systems to capitalize on indirect sales, thus giving the PRM market significant traction.

Impartner was founded in 1997 by Craig Flynn, a cloud visionary who saw the potential of SaaS solutions early on and became a critical pioneer in the PRM industry. Impartner (formally known as Treehouse Interactive) was acquired by Kennet Partners in 2015. Under the guidance and leadership of their current CEO, Joe Wang, they have introduced a stream of industry-first innovations to make Impartner PRM the industry’s most powerful, easy-to-update platform in the market.

When it comes to PRM solutions, Impartner delivers one of the most advanced SaaS-based solutions available. It's one of the industry’s most awarded PRM technology, having developed a turnkey solution that can deploy a partner portal in as little as 14 days. Impartner has developed Velocity^™, which is a highly engineered, 3–step onboarding process that is pivotal to fast deployment. With more than 7 million users signing into partner portals using Impartner technology, the company helps businesses worldwide manage their partner relationships and accelerate revenue and profitability through indirect sales channels.

I was able to connect with their Marketing Director, Kerry Desberg, to discuss the Impartner's Gartner placement, the recent fall launch, along with her thoughts about what the future holds for this industry.

Congratulations on being included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant CRM Lead Management for the 2nd time. Could you tell me how this inclusion will shape your goals for the upcoming year?

"The No. 1 reason our customers buy our PRM solution is for lead management. We were absolutely knocked out to be included with other companies who are primarily focused on direct sales – and that we are the only vendor included in the MQ that is purpose-built for indirect sales versus direct sales. It was also particularly rewarding to have our reference customers call us out for our ability to integrate with other solutions and for our service and support. This report is only further validation of the critical need for companies to be able to manage their leads in indirect sales with the same visibility as direct sales.  We look forward to continuing to help an increasing number of corporations see the same 31 percent increase in revenue in the first year of use alone by continuing to educate the market on the power of PRM and our lead management solutions to transform their business."

What are your biggest challenges in the competitive market and how do you differentiate yourself?

"As the best-selling, most award-winning pure-play PRM solution, we stand out for the breadth of our solution; our integrability and speed of deployment; our regular cadence of quarterly updates; our segmentation engine, SegmentAI, which allows companies to automate providing exactly the right care and feeding to all types of partners; our strident security protocols -- which have earned us the majority of top security vendors; the fact we’re built from the ground up for the complexities of the indirect channel; and our proven, nearly 20-year-track record of helping leading corporations from Xerox to Fortinet harness the power of their channel."

You recently launched the Fall ’18 release of your PRM Solution – could you elaborate and tell us how this release improved the solution for your users?

"One of the key fall innovations from our global Channel Innovation Labs, is the launch of a transactional data lake. With the new release, Impartner technology will mirror transactional data into a data lake optimized for analytics, which, as it learns, will provide predictive, prescriptive data-backed recommendations to channel managers to help them continually improve the performance of their channel."

Where do you see the future trends and technologies to disrupt CRM / PRM solutions?

"Data, data, data.  Seventy-five percent of revenue flows through the channel in most companies. Companies who implement contemporary PRM solutions like Impartner PRM can crack open the black box of partner performance and truly have the data and visibility they need to manage their indirect channel in the same way they do their direct channel. Imagine the power of this, when you consider PRM has the potential to do for the indirect channel, what CRM has done for the 20 percent of sales that flow through direct sales. The possibilities are stunning."

How Impartner PRM Works

 

The Efficiency of a PRM Solution

In the past, running an indirect sales system often meant that you simply had to trust partners to get their sales cycle completed, leaving you without much of the ability for direct oversight. Today, PRM software allows you to administer, document, and improve indirect sale performance almost as closely as if you had a department in your own company. All in all, a PRM solution can improve efficiencies for vendors and partners in a varitety of ways, including some of the following examples.

Data tracking and analytics - Similar to a customer relationship management (CRM) system, a PRM system has the data crunching technology that tracks not only customers, but partners as well. This provides the means to see exactly what is happening with your partners’ leads and sales in greater detail, along with the cability to share those insights with the partners themselves.

Centralized communications - Effective communication has always been the crux of relationship building, especially for indirect sales systems that involve many partners. A PRM solution centralizes all communications, whether through email, chat rooms, or face-to-face video conferencing, enabling information to flow throughout the system with ease.

Repositories - In the past, managing scattered and often outdated information was an onerous task. Vital data that is kept current and made available to all who require it is critical. PRM's centralized repositories compile documentation and other materials your partners need to succeed. From technical documents to marketing materials, PRM ensures your partners always have access to the latest and most up-to-date information from your company, which is a must when pushing sales.

Online training - Bringing on new partners is considered to be a costly and a time-consuming part of running a partner system. Before PRM, companies would fly representatives around the country to conduct in-person training sessions which, in turn, were seen as wasteful and expensive by partners. A PRM enables the hosting of extensive training and self-learning materials. This allows partner sales staff to learn at their own pace without disrupting their primary work while the PRM system monitors their performance. Onboarding and maintaining product training has never been so easy.

Ending Notes

As a result of advances in technology over the last decade, PRM systems have increased in functionality and have become more widely available and accessible in their price point. An effective PRM system will provide visibility and influence.