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Is the juice worth the squeeze?

04.17.24

Putting in the work on PRM tools pays off.

Your PRM, known as the Partner Portal to your partners, should hold all the sales tools, automated processes, and enablement necessary to help partners sell your joint value proposition (and deliver on it). That’s easy to write, but in reality, it’s more complex. Anyone who has been through the experience of solution evaluation, implementation, change management and ensuring post-launch success has at some point asked themselves whether “the juice is worth the squeeze.”

Topics: Partnering Tips, PRM

Check It Before You Wreck It

03.20.24

Overcome 5 Roadblocks of Partner Digital Experience

At the 2024 Impartner customer event Multiply, we assessed the PRM/partner portal of attendees in a service called ‘Check your PDX’. My co-worker and I conducted these checks in tandem, back-to-back, in 30-minute segments for six straight hours. It was interesting to see the wide landscape of different partner-facing systems but by the end the meagre snacks and prolonged period in front of the screens had us running for the poolside to talk through our findings. One thing that became obvious was how many vendors face the same PDX roadblocks. From lack of focus to partner program alignment, navigating these roadblocks is essential for optimising collaboration and driving mutual growth.

Topics: Partnering Tips, PRM

A Partner Portal is Not a Silver Bullet

10.18.23

Follow 5 principles for a PRM that improves partner experience

The new generation of partners are digital-first. They want to self-serve partnership information online – not pick up a phone and make a call (do phones still do that?) to then be emailed a fuzzy scanned PDF (which is probably out of date). From onboarding and enablement processes to opportunity registration and marketing, all partner information should be easily accessed from your partner portal/PRM (Partner Relationship Management) solution. However, a basic implementation of a PRM (where you throw every document you have every created online behind a gated login) isn’t going to cut it anymore. Purchasing and deploying a partner portal is not enough to drive success with your partners. An effective partner portal follows the same design principles as the partner program and the user experience should be designed for maximum partner engagement.

Topics: Featured, Partnering Tips, PRM

3 Ways to Improve Your Next PRM Implementation

03.29.17

What I learned through a major migration, in mostly non-technical terms.

By Chris Smith, VP of Technology at PartnerPath

A few years out of college, back when I wore a tie every day, I worked on a massive system conversion implementation for a bank. The project was a 12-month slog ending with t-shirts that read, “I survived the Hermes system conversion.” Fast forward a few decades and another major migration project presented itself. PartnerPath is always looking to evolve our solutions and we decided to change our hosting environment. Our choice was prompted by a desire to take advantage of advancements in cloud hosting, including elastic scalability, load balancing, redundancy and other techie buzz terms. With the successful migration now behind us, I see parallels in how we administered our changes with how we encourage customers to approach PRM changes.

Topics: PRM

Walk a Mile in Your Partner’s Shoes

01.25.17

Impersonate a Partner and Experience Your Own PRM System

By Chris Smith, VP of Technology

It’s a new year, and a great time for reflection, goal setting and planning. Lately I’ve been reflecting on my performance, both professionally and personally, to find areas for improvement. I've committed to riding my bike more, eating healthier, learning a new skill and returning to my love of writing code. What do you want to work on in 2017? Would you like to improve channel partnering at your company? That’s a broad goal, albeit a noble one, so I suggest taking a moment to walk in your partner’s shoes. Reflect on their daily experience with your programs, systems and tools and see where there is room for improvement.

Topics: PRM

Use PRM to Connect with Partners

11.30.16

By Chris Smith, VP of Technology

Partner Relationship Management (PRM) is a critical set of tools for companies hoping to engage and empower their channel partners. The relationship between you and your partners must always be managed and nurtured. When your partner feels ignored, the relationship is going to take a critical downturn. Good relationships, the ones that thrive, are built around four things:

Topics: Channel Best Practices, PRM

Use PRM to Prevent Channel Conflict

10.12.16

Always focus on the relationship.

By Chris Smith, VP of Technology

It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
– Benjamin Franklin

PRM stands for Partner Relationship Management and is a critical set of tools for companies hoping to engage and empower their channel partners. The relationship between you and your partners must always be managed and nurtured because all it takes is one mistake to ruin things. Good relationships, the ones that thrive, are built around these four things:

Topics: Channel Best Practices, PRM

Tech Channel Video Cast: The Forrester Wave™ on PRM

08.19.16

This week, hosts Charlene O'Hanlon, channel industry editor & writer, and Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath, chat with special guest Tim Harmon, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. He answers questions about his most recent publication, The Forrester Wave™: Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Platforms.

Topics: videocast, PRM

Putting the 'R' in PRM

08.17.16

Never underestimate the power of communication.

By Chris Smith, VP of Technology

PRM stands for Partner Relationship Management and is a critical set of tools for companies hoping to engage and empower their channel partners. Whether it’s family, friends, co-workers, customers, partners or the over-achieving neighbor down the street, all relationships are unique and above all, challenging. But the good ones, the thriving relationships, are built around these four things:

Topics: Channel Best Practices, PRM

4 Ways Automation Streamlines PAM Activity

07.20.16

Good PRM Tools Help Turn Your PAMs Into Rockstars

By Chris Smith, Vice President of Technology

Is your PRM solution (if you have one) built to turn your Partner Account Managers (PAMs) into rockstars? PAMs (or Channel Account Managers – CAMs) are the face of your company to your partners. According to our 2016 State of Partnering Report, the preferred way a partner would like to interact with their vendor is through a Partner Account Manager.

Topics: Channel Best Practices, PRM