While there may be slight variations in their functionalities, PRMs generally operate as portals established by vendors, offering a range of features. Vendors grant login credentials to their partners, who utilize the PRM platform as their centralized hub for all activities related to their participating partner programs.

Although all solutions offer something a little different in terms of functionality there are typically some common attributes that each of them share.

A primary feature typically found in a PRM is the capability to provide partner training on your solution. Training plays a critical role as partner sales teams often handle multiple products, making concise and effective training essential for swiftly bringing them up to speed. It serves as a cornerstone for an effective partner program, ensuring that partners are equipped with the necessary knowledge to effectively sell your solution

A primary feature typically found in a PRM is the capability to provide partner training on your solution. Training plays a critical role as partner sales teams often handle multiple products, making concise and effective training essential for swiftly bringing them up to speed. It serves as a cornerstone for an effective partner program, ensuring that partners are equipped with the necessary knowledge to effectively sell your solution

In addition to equipping your partners with product training and marketing resources to drive lead generation, it is essential to maintain a consistent mechanism that reinforces your brand identity and value proposition. This is where partner enablement becomes a crucial feature offered by many PRM solutions. Partner enablement serves as a catalyst, propelling your partners in the right direction and ensuring their continued engagement and alignment with your business objectives.

Apart from providing training to partners on your solution, it is crucial to offer resources that empower them to generate demand. This is why incorporating functionality within PRMs that allows partners to not only access and download marketing resources for promoting your product but also launch campaigns in certain cases has become a common feature.

Furthermore, in more comprehensive partner portals, the inclusion of features such as the ability to set up Market Development Funds (MDF) programs and streamline the submission process enhances the overall effectiveness of partner engagement. These additional functionalities enable partners to leverage dedicated funds for joint marketing initiatives and facilitate seamless collaboration between vendors and partners.

Gaining insights into the overall success of your partner program requires access to data. That's why it's commonplace for PRMs to offer analytics functionality, enabling comprehensive tracking of program activities. PRMs typically provide user-friendly dashboards that equip your partner team with the necessary insights to effectively manage your partner program.

If you are running a partner program, there is a high likelihood that you will have a number of different partner types as part of your program. In fact, according to our “Partner Ecosystem Outlook” report, there are lots of different flavors when it comes to partner types with companies partnering with traditional resellers all the way to more complex hyperscaler partners.

These could range from resellers, VARs, system integrators and  technology partners. These different types of partners tend to have different business models, and therefore need different things from a PRM solution.

Let's examine that statement in more detail.

If I am a reseller, the things I am most concerned about are typically training and enablement to get me up to speed and running with your product. My journey inside your PRM therefore should be customized to highlight more of the training content you have available to get me up to speed with your solution.

This will differ to a technology partner who perhaps is more concerned with your joint value proposition and the technical aspects of your product.

To reiterate each partner type requires different things in order to be successful and a PRM should reciprocate this nuance.

By having a one size fits all, partners are not signposted to the things that matter, leading to sub par experiences and a lack of adoption of your partner portal, because it doesn't reflect what they need to be truly successful.

One additional challenge associated with current Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solutions is the practice of companies partnering with multiple organizations, each having its own partner portal.

This situation poses significant difficulties for sales teams that interact with these partners, as they are required to log in to each individual portal separately, resulting in a cumbersome user experience. Furthermore, the distinct features and functionalities of each portal further exacerbate the problem, as it necessitates the sales teams to invest substantial effort in learning and adapting to each platform.

Considering the pivotal role played by sales teams in the success of a partner program, these two obstacles significantly hinder the usability of traditional portal-based PRM systems, impeding their widespread adoption.

In a typical partner program, a designated point of contact (such as a partner or channel account manager) manages the overall relationship. However, the key to a successful partnership lies in empowering the sales team to promote your solution to a wide customer base.
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Unfortunately, modern PRMs often fall short in this aspect. Traditional PRM solutions involve a separate platform with different login credentials, requiring sales reps to navigate away from their daily workflow to access training, deal registration forms, and additional product information.

Consider the average direct sales representative who relies on 2-3 main tools each day, such as email, instant messaging, and their CRM. Introducing another solution that doesn't integrate seamlessly disrupts their workflow and reduces the likelihood of product adoption, limiting the impact of the PRM.

Furthermore, imagine if sales reps are partnering with multiple companies, each with their own separate PRM portals. They are forced to log in to several different portals on a daily basis, engaging in activities that don't directly contribute to revenue generation.

Put yourself in the shoes of your partner's sales team, and you'll understand a significant issue with current PRMs – they don't make it easy for the people who are crucial to your success.

PRMs provide tool sets to make the education, enablement and initial tracking and payout of deals easy. But its the stuff that happens in between which partners and their sales need assistance with. Ultimately, the value in your partners program is delivered via partner sourced revenue, and so having your internal teams collaborate where necessary in order to close deals faster is critical to a successful partnership program. This need for seamless collaboration is not reflected in many PRM solutions.

In fact, most PRMs work in the following way, a partner registers a lead, the partner manager goes in and manually approves the lead in question. The next thing that happens is the partner manager manually coordinates with their sales teams, to work with the partner to help support the deal.

This can be a fairly cumbersome process and especially in larger programs with hundreds of partners with potentially thousands of deals being submitted this can lead to confusion and opportunities to close business being missed. To add additional evidence to this point when interviewing hundreds of partner leaders as part of our “Partner Ecosystem Outlook” report, we found overwhelmingly (in more than 50% of respondents) that many wanted a single pane view that both partners and internal teams could work from in order to move deals forward seamlessly.

We have already referenced that a common feature of many PRM solutions is some type of training solution. However, although many PRMs contain a learning solution, not all are effective at training partner sales teams efficiently.
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In fact, again referencing the data we gathered from partnership leaders, the common complaints from respondents included ineffective content, the inability to measure and track content consumption and a lack of ongoing training and enablement throughout the lifecycle of a partner.
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These gaps in out of the box training solutions provided by PRMs result in partners not fully understanding your solution and as a result not being able to effectively sell your solution, which negatively impacts the overall revenue generated by your partners program. Additionally, partner teams make use of other platforms outside of their PRM based training platform.

In our “Partner Ecosystem Outlook” Report, we found that partner teams used a variety of different platforms to supplement their partner programs.

PRMs fail to realize this and the lack of LMS functionality represents another hurdle for partner engagement.

Throughout our research, we gathered insights from various partnership leaders on PRM solutions and their desired improvements for future iterations. Enhanced automation emerged as the second most requested feature.

A prevalent issue with current PRMs is their static nature. While basic automation exists in the form of onboarding flows, which guide partners to training and enablement, there is still a significant need for hand-holding to ensure partners navigate all necessary steps for full program proficiency. In the face of challenging economic times and reductions in resources across the partnership and SaaS industries, partnership teams are striving to accomplish more with fewer resources.

The survey revealed a range of automation desires among partnership leaders, from automated partner journeys that guide partners through comprehensive onboarding processes to simple Slack integrations enabling sales teams to register leads seamlessly within their familiar tools. In an efficiency-driven world, PRMs still heavily rely on partner managers and resources to ensure effective utilization by partner teams.

Your partner program should be designed to enable partner success. However, the existing gaps in PRMs that we have discussed above have a negative impact on the partner experience and, consequently, overall partner satisfaction.

Ideally, you aim to provide a stress-free program that allows partners to easily accomplish the necessary actions. A seamless partner experience is crucial, as it helps avoid partner frustration and, in extreme cases, prevents partners from leaving your program due to the challenges associated with partnering.

With the challenges detailed above, PRMs instead of offering a seamless experience of partners, are instead offering one that requires them to put in an extreme amount of effort to partner with you, which should never be the case.

As you may be aware, the acquisition and implementation of PRMs entail substantial upfront investments. However, based on the adoption statistics mentioned earlier, there is a risk that the value partners receive from these solutions may not align proportionally with the significant investment made.

Furthermore, when PRMs are not user-friendly, the resources invested by teams in marketing and training efforts may go to waste. This results in a loss of effort and resources that could have been utilized more effectively.

In the realm of partner programs, revenue is the ultimate goal. However, the current gaps in modern PRMs that we've discussed throughout this blog post can have disastrous consequences for your program's revenue potential.

In the complex landscape of PRM platforms, where partner sales teams are burdened with visiting portals and logging deals, the risk of missed opportunities becomes a harsh reality. With barriers in place to register an opportunity and the fact that partners are often juggling multiple products, it's all too easy for them to forget to log crucial opportunities. And when opportunities go unregistered, you miss out on valuable revenue that should have been within your grasp.

By relying on outdated PRM solutions, you inadvertently hinder your program's ability to reach its full revenue potential. The gaps and limitations of these systems act as barriers to success, preventing you from maximizing the revenue-generating capabilities of your partner program.

In a previous section we highlighted one of the drawbacks associated with the existing approach: the use of separate portals with distinct features and functionalities for each vendor.

At Pronto, we acknowledge the challenges this presents to sales teams when it comes to embracing a PRM solution on a broader scale. That's why our next-generation PRM takes a different approach by leveraging networks instead of relying solely on portals.
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With Pronto, if you partner with multiple vendors who are all using the Pronto PRM platform, you can access all vendors within a single login, benefiting from a unified user interface and consistent user experience. Gone are the days of juggling multiple tabs, remembering different passwords, and navigating through various locations just to register a deal. Pronto brings everything together under one roof.

This not only simplifies and reduces stress for sales teams participating in your partner program but also enhances overall adoption rates. Sales teams can conveniently access relevant partner programs within a single instance, eliminating the need for separate portals and streamlining their workflow.

Partner sales teams are constantly occupied. There's no denying it. That's why it's crucial to simplify their participation in your partner program. To tackle the existing challenges of separate portals, multiple logins, and an overall cumbersome process, future PRMs should incorporate functionalities that keep sales reps within their daily tools.
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At Pronto, we are addressing this issue through various approaches, offering a range of options for sales teams to access the partner portal.

The first option is a dedicated portal that consolidates multiple partners, eliminating the need to switch between multiple portals. This streamlines operations and increases efficiency.

The second option involves integrating with the tools sales reps use on a daily basis, such as CRM and instant messaging platforms. Within a sales team's CRM, a portal widget will be available, enabling tasks like lead submission without leaving their preferred CRM environment.

Furthermore, we are actively developing an integration with Slack, one of the most widely used instant messaging platforms. This integration will allow sales teams to seamlessly access the PRM functionalities directly from within Slack.

By providing multiple avenues for partner sales teams to access and utilize your PRM, you make it effortless for them to engage with it. This, in turn, enhances adoption, improves their satisfaction, and ensures that every opportunity is captured and doesnt slip through the cracks due to the difficulty in juggling multiple portals.

As we have discussed earlier, each partner type is unique. This implies that employing a "one size fits all" approach, commonly found in modern PRMs, can present challenges.

At Pronto, we are developing a solution that allows for a tailored experience for each partner type within your PRM. By creating a program for each partner type and configuring it, partners that are different partner types can have customized and automated pathways.

Rather than having to search for relevant information and resources, our PRM will promptly direct them to the most relevant and crucial aspects, eliminating any obstacles and ensuring a seamless experience.

By crafting an experience that caters to their specific requirements, you are likely to reduce frustration among your partner cohort and, in turn, enhance overall adoption of your partner portal.

When examining conventional PRMs, the primary metrics they monitor are pipeline, commission, and win rates. While these metrics are essential, they may lack the subtlety required when analyzing PRM data.

At Pronto, we have taken the initiative to provide additional valuable metrics that offer comprehensive insights into the utilization of your software. The following list provides an overview of some of the supplementary metrics that will be made available in Pronto's modern PRM, along with the advantages they are expected to deliver.

As previously mentioned, the effectiveness of training in many PRMs often falls short of expectations. Rather than attempting to create a cutting-edge LMS from scratch within our PRM, we have decided to prioritize building robust integrations with the most popular LMS platforms available. This renewed focus on integrations will benefit companies that already utilize an LMS by allowing them to seamlessly connect it with their PRM, eliminating the need to create or transfer content to a completely new system.

Furthermore, for those without an existing LMS, this approach will provide them with the flexibility to choose from a range of best-in-class tools, rather than settling for learning solutions that are merely attached to PRMs.