Partner Relationship Management Solution Market Is Estimated to Witness High Growth Owing to Increasing Demand from Enterprises and Growing Need for Managing Partner Lifecycle
The Partner Relationship Management Solution market is estimated to be valued at USD 21.74 Bn in 2024 and witness a CAGR of 16.9% over the forecast period from 2024-2031. PRM solutions help organizations to efficiently manage all aspects of partner engagement including recruiting, onboarding, training, enabling marketing initiatives, and driving sales. Furthermore, these solutions offer enhanced visibility into partner activities and performance metrics, facilitate integrated communication across teams and partners, and automate routine yet critical processes to help boost productivity.
Market Dynamics:
The growth of the partner relationship management solution market is driven by the increasing demand from enterprises across industries to streamline complex partner ecosystem and derive tangible business outcomes. PRM solutions provide a centralized platform to enterprises to manage large partner networks, measure partner performance, offer continuous training and certification programs, and automate routine tasks like lead/deal allocation. This has significantly boosted the productivity of enterprise sales and partner organizations. Additionally, the growing need among companies to implement systematic processes for managing the entire partner lifecycle from acquisition to retirement is positively impacting the adoption of PRM solutions. Advanced capabilities including predictive analytics on partner activities and automated marketing campaigns are also propelling the PRM market.
Market Drivers
Increasing Demand for Automation of Partner Operations
Partner relationship management solutions help organizations manage their complex partner ecosystems in an automated way. With PRM solutions, organizations can automate various tasks related to partner onboarding, training, certification, marketing development funds management, sales enablement, performance tracking and more. This helps free up resources that were earlier spent on manual tasks and enables organizations to scale up their partner programs. As partner ecosystems continue to grow in size and complexity for most organizations, the demand for automating partner operations is increasing significantly. PRM solutions address this growing need felt by organizations and help drive revenue, reduce costs and improve partner experience.
Requirement for Increased Visibility Across Partners
Given the distributed nature of partner ecosystems, it is challenging for organizations to get a unified view of all partner activities and performance. With PRM solutions, organizations gain increased visibility into the activities, metrics and ROI associated with each partner. Features like partner dashboards, customizable reports and analytics help provide a centralized view of the entire partner landscape. This improved visibility allows organizations to make data-driven decisions around partner programs like determining top performers, identifying gaps, allocating marketing development funds and more. It further helps improve governance and compliance. As partnerships play an increasingly important role in the revenue models of most organizations, the need for increased visibility across partners is a major growth driver for the Partner relationship management solutions market.
Market Restraints
High Implementation and Migration Costs
PRM solutions require significant upfront investments and have complex implementations involving system integration with other apps, custom configurations, data migration and training. For many small and medium enterprises, the high implementation and migration costs pose a major barrier. Even for large enterprises, the investments required are substantial as most PRM vendors follow on-premise deployment models requiring infrastructure set up and support costs. The high total cost of ownership restrains wider adoption of PRM solutions, especially among smaller organizations with tight budgets.
Resistance to Change from Traditional Ways of Working
Most organizations have well established traditional processes, tools and ways of working when it comes to partner relationship management. Transitioning to new automated systems requires significant changes to existing ways of working. This results in resistance to change from various stakeholders within the organization. Overcoming resistance to change management becomes a lengthy process further increasing implementation timelines and costs. The inertia to stick to traditional models poses a challenge for the growth of the PRM market.
Market Opportunities
Cloud-Based and Subscription Pricing Models
The availability of PRM solutions through cloud-based and subscription pricing models opens up new opportunities. The cloud delivery approach addresses the high upfront costs challenge by allowing pay-as-you-go financing options. It reduces infrastructure costs and implementation timelines. Additionally, the consumption-based subscription pricing models allow for easier budgeting and make PRM adoption viable even for cash strapped smaller firms. Vendors offering SaaS and subscription pricing models are well positioned to drive further adoption.
Growing Channel Partner Ecosystems Drive the Need for PRM Solutions
As B2B firms continue expanding into new geographies, industry verticals and technologies, their channel partner ecosystems are proliferating rapidly as well. This network effect leads to increasing complexity challenges. PRM solutions help organizations scale and manage these growing ecosystems in an effective manner. Their demand is driven by the rapid growth witnessed in partner networks across most industries. Technology providers expanding through channels and marketplaces have a growing need for PRM solutions to govern their burgeoning partner ecosystems.
Key Developments
- In January 2022, Impartner launched a comprehensive Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365, integrating with the CRM to provide a holistic view of both direct and indirect sales channel performance. This integration empowers marketers to manage lead distribution, share marketing assets, and gain insights into partners' deals, while also offering a centralized platform for managing channel marketing and sales efforts.
- In April 2020, ZINFI Technologies, a leading provider of Unified Channel Management (UCM) solutions, introduced an integrated account-based channel marketing platform designed specifically for organizations that sell through a channel partner network. This cutting-edge solution enables vendors to streamline their channel marketing efforts and drive profitable revenue growth by leveraging a comprehensive suite of tools and analytics.
- In September 2020, Alcatraz joined forces with Channeltivity, a leading partner relationship management (PRM) software platform, to develop a cutting-edge channel and training program that would significantly enhance the success of Alcatraz's biometric access control partners. This strategic partnership aimed to streamline interactions between Alcatraz and its partners, fostering better communication, increased training opportunities, and more effective sales channel enablement.
- In July 2019, Salesforce, a leading provider of cloud-based CRM solutions, enhanced its Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platform with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and self-reporting features. These advancements were designed to empower channel managers by delivering more accurate and efficient insights into partner performance and interactions, enabling them to optimize partner engagement strategies.
Key Players
Allbound, Channeltivity, HubSpot, Impartner, Ingram Micro Cloud, Kaseya, LogicBay, Magentrix, Microsoft, Mindmatrix, Oracle, Pansonic, Pax8, Salesforce, Upland Cloudreach, Upland Quadrogen, Upland Voiance, Zendesk, Zift Solutions, and ZINFI Technologies
