Channel Software Tech Stack 2020 — PRM, TCMA, Ecosystem, Incentives, Channel Data, Learning, Readiness, And Pricing

Jay McBain, Principal Analyst

Jun 26 2020

* ALERT: NEW 2021 STACK NOW PUBLISHED HERE! *

The channel technology stack is a group of technologies that firms leverage to plan with, find, recruit, onboard, develop, enable, incentivize, cosell with, comarket with, manage, measure, and report on partners. Delivering automation of indirect sales processes, workflows, and partner programs, channel software is becoming increasingly critical to a brand’s ability to win, serve, and retain its customers and partners. It’s a fast-growing market, with 59% of companies increasing spending across the stack.

With the rapidly shifting partner landscape, channel leaders and B2B marketers can no longer succeed with manual, human-centric processes or rely on spreadsheets to manage their partner programs. With the trifurcation of partners into influencer, transactional, and retention categories, managing a plethora of concurrent activities without sufficient automation is no longer possible.

To accelerate performance of their partnerships, alliances, and channel ecosystems, companies are evaluating and adopting a range of contributing technologies. Often, the focus of channel technologies is to manage, monitor, and measure the partner journey while improving the overall partner experience. Running a channel program is inherently complex, with hundreds of elements and thousands of moving parts.

Partner programs generate mountains of data from multiple internal and external systems. Data also arrives at unpredictable intervals, is often incomplete or inaccurate, and doesn’t provide an integrated view of each partner or channel performance as a whole. Vendors are quickly overcoming these challenges and beginning to offer AI-infused, real-time, actionable insight.

Channel software makes partnering easier, more consistent, and more predictable for both sides of the relationship.

Channel programs can also be very expensive, with front- and back-end discounts, rebates, programs, and incentives costing anywhere between 10% to 50% of the overall sale. The channel software tech stack is made up of 159 companies across seven technology categories that today drive $2.1 billion in pure software revenue (the vast majority in a software-as-a-service model).

These channel software companies range from Fortune 500 juggernauts such as IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP to small startups delivering point solutions. With only 50% of companies reporting that they’re utilizing channel software for their indirect sales, this software market could double in the next few years.

We recently published “The Forrester Tech Tide: Channel Software, Q2 2020,” a report that surveyed customers, vendors, and industry experts about the channel software tech stack. We specifically looked at the seven technology categories and received interesting feedback on what they were investing in, experimenting with, maintaining, and divesting from. We received key insights into overall business value, maturity, and lifecycle costs.

Technology Categories

Partner relationship management (PRM) — Supports the activities required to manage the entire lifecycle of channel partners, including partner targeting, recruitment, onboarding, enablement, engagement, communication, development, coselling, and comarketing. It provides critical integrations to back-end systems such as CRM, enterprise resource planning, and marketing tools.

Through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) — Enables partners to engage their customers with a consistent vendor brand experience to create awareness and generate demand. It helps organize and disseminate content and supports the execution of marketing programs, campaigns, and cobranded collateral that drive partner-led demand and accelerate channel lead and pipeline volume and velocity. It includes through-, to-, for-, and with-channel marketing automation.

Channel learning and readiness (CLR) — Supports partner development through the administration, tracking, and delivery of educational training courses and enablement resources, including learning management systems, accreditation and certification management, content management systems, partner portals, communities, and sales enablement.

Channel incentives management (CIM) — Manages design, allocation, tracking, and distribution of financial incentives to the partner ecosystem, including market development funds (MDFs), sales performance incentive funds (SPIFs), co-ops, bonuses, rebates, price protection, channel sales compensation, and loyalty programs. It includes behavioral tactics such as gamification, micro-incentives, and nonmonetary and motivational incentives.

Channel data management (CDM) — Collects, cleanses, and aggregates transactional point-of-sale and inventory data from partners and distributors in a trusted single data asset that enables business and actionable intelligence. It includes new categories of predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning.

Channel financials, pricing, and inventory — Manages indirect-sales-related revenue and costs, determines the correct value of transactions, automates key financial reporting processes, and prevents errors in payment, commission, and rebates. It addresses pricing, inventory planning, gross-to-nets, discounts, compliance, tracking inventory levels, and price protection.

Channel ecosystem management — Manages the influence, transaction, and retention channels across the entire customer buying journey. It supports attribution for partner business models, such as alliances, affinity, affiliates, advocates, ambassadors, integrators, consultants, shadow channels, super-connectors, and digital influencers as well as multiparty, multipartner orchestration of complex partner ecosystems.

In an Accenture survey, 76% of CEOs agree that their current business model will be unrecognizable in the next five years, and ecosystems will be the main change agent. The number of partnerships, whether transactional or nontransactional, will grow exponentially over this time, with new partners needing to be found, recruited, onboarded, educated, trained, incentivized, motivated, loyal, and having the tools necessary to support/promote products and services at scale.

The future of channel partner programs and ecosystems will be anchored on automation, flexibility, scalability, and self-service. The effective use of technology tools is no longer optional — ecosystems don’t run on spreadsheets!

Partner Relationship Management (PRM)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
Allbound	Arizona, USA	Daniel Graff-Radford	2014
AppDirect	California, USA	Nicolas Desmarais	2009
Aximpro	Bavaria, Germany	Andreas Reid	2008
Channelkonnect	Bengaluru, India	Basaveswarlu Boyapati	2015
Channeltivity	North Carolina, USA	Jason Jacobs	2007
ChannelXperts	Landau, Germany	Volker Wiora	2006
Computer Market Research	California, USA	Del Heles	1984
Comviva	Haryana, India	Manoranjan Mohapatra	1999
Creatio	Massachusetts, USA	Katherine Kostereva	2002
Elioplus	Athens, Greece	Ilias Ndreu	2015
GorillaToolz	New York, USA	Jay Fruin	2007
Impartner	Utah, USA	Joe Wang	1997
Inova Software	France	Gilles Toulemonde	2010
Kiflo PRM	France	Steven Muhr	2018
LogicBay	North Carolina, USA	John Panaccione	1980
Magentrix	Ontario, Canada	Sam Arjmandi	2012
Mindmatrix	Pennsylvania, USA	Harbinder Khera	1998
myprm	Levallois-Perret, France	Richard Bessis	2015
Oracle PRM	California, USA	Safra Catz	1977
PartnerPortal.io	Ontario, Canada	Jonathan Coy	2018
Pegasystems	Massachusetts, USA	Alan Trefler	1983
Salesforce	California, USA	Marc Benioff	1999
Webinfinity	New York, USA	James Hodgkinson	2012
Zift Solutions	New Jersey, USA	Gordon Rapkin	2006
Zinfi Technologies	California, USA	Sugata Sanyal	2007

Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
Ansira	Missouri, USA	Jay Dettling	1919
Aprimo	Illinois, USA	John Stammen	2006
Awin	Berlin, Germany	Mark Walters	2000
BrandMaker	Germany	Mirko Holzer	1999
Brandmuscle	Illinois, USA	Scott Weeren	2000
Bridgeline Digital	Massachusetts, USA	Ari Kahn	2000
Broadridge	New York, USA	Tim Gokey	1962
CampaignDrive	New York, USA	Bruce Reading	2001
Channel Fusion	Iowa, USA	Pankaj Monga	2003
ChannelXperts	Landau, Germany	Volker Wiora	2006
Code Worldwide	England, UK	Matt McNeany	2003
ContentMX	Massachusetts, USA	Jeffrey Mesnik	2009
DemandBridge	Georgia, USA	David Rich	1975
Distribion	Texas, USA	Tim Storer	2009
E2open	California, USA	Michael Farlekas	2004
Elateral	Surrey, UK	Peter Blackburn	1998
eTrigue	California, USA	Jeff Holmes	2011
Gage	Minnesota, USA	Tom Belle	1992
Impartner	Utah, USA	Joe Wang	1997
MarcomCentral	California, USA	Byung Choi	2000
Mindmatrix	Pennsylvania, USA	Harbinder Khera	1998
MRP	Pennsylvania, USA	Kevin Cunningham	2002
Netsertive	North Carolina, USA	Steve Leonard	2009
OneAffiniti	NSW, Australia	Joel Montgomery	2008
PageFlex	Massachusetts, USA	Jim Dore	1997
Partner Marketing	Marlow, UK	Kirsty Gilchrist	2001
Powerchord	Florida, USA	William Volmuth	2001
promoboxx	Massachusetts, USA	Brent Delehey	2010
RVLVR	California, USA	Mike Trevino	2017
Sitecore	California, USA	Mark Frost	1999
Spark Your Channel	Colorado, USA	Heather K. Margolis	1998
Sproutloud	Florida, USA	Jared Shusterman	2006
StructuredWeb	New York, USA	Daniel Nissan	1998
Thalamus	California, USA	Garrett Gan	2014
TripTych	Minnesota, USA	Fuzzy Marek	1974
Vendasta	Saskatchewan, Canada	Brendan King	2008
Vistex	Illinois, USA	Sanjay Shah	1999
Wedia	Ile-de-France, France	Nicolas Boutet	2001
xAmplify	California, USA	Sudhir Nambiar	2018
Zift Solutions	New Jersey, USA	Gordon Rapkin	2006
Zinfi Technologies	California, USA	Sugata Sanyal	2007

Channel Learning And Readiness (CLR)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
360Learning	France	Nick Hernandez	2013
Absorb LMS	Alberta, Canada	Mike Owens	2003
Ambassador	Michigan, USA	Jeff Epstein	2010
Bigtincan	California, USA	David Keane	2012
BlueVolt	Oregon, USA	Benjamin Ertischek	2003
Brainshark	Massachusetts, USA	Greg Flynn	1999
Channel Rocket	Colorado, USA	Greg Sherrill	2013
Channel360	Hampshire, UK	Mark Fowler, COO	1999
ChannelCentral	Essex, UK	Tim Moyle	2007
ChannelEZ	California, USA	Sam Gadi	2013
CM-Focus	Texas, USA	Girish Balakrishnan	2008
Cornerstone	California, USA	Adam Miller	1999
CoSell.io	California, USA	Rob Brown	2019
Crowd Wisdom	Florida, USA	David Wirta	2017
CSG Services	Washington, USA	Ian McAlister	1997
Elioplus	Athens, Greece	Ilias Ndreu	2015
Expertus	California, USA	Ramesh Ramani	1998
Fision	Minnesota, USA	Laurence Mascera	2011
FusionGrove	London, UK	Brian Allsopp	2001
Gorilla Corporation	California, USA	Carlo Tortora Brayda di Belvedere	1992
Growth Engineering	Berkshire, UK	David Denny	2004
Highspot	Washington, USA	Robert Wahbe	2012
IBM Partner Engagement Manager	New York, USA	Arvind Krishna	1911
Kickpost.io	Arizona, USA	Richard Rodriguez	2018
Klyck	Ontario, Canada	Chris Skura	2016
LeadMethod	Oregon, USA	Justin Johnson	2014
LeadSmart Technologies	California, USA	Kevin Brown	2018
Mediafly	Illinois, USA	Carson Conant	2006
Mobileforce	California, USA	Jagadish Banhole	2011
NetExam	Texas, USA	Brett Strauss	1999
PartnerAmp	Wisconsin, USA	Jon Aleckson	1999
PartnerInsight	UK	Roman Kirsanov	2019
PartnerOn	Massachusetts, USA	Jeffrey Mesnik	2010
PartnerTap	Washington, USA	Cassandra Gholston	2016
Q2E	California, USA	Mahesh Rao	2016
Qotient	California, USA	Justin Wright	2013
Recur Global	Hertfordshire, UK	Matthew Hathorn	2011
Salesforce	California, USA	Marc Benioff	1999
Seismic	California, USA	Doug Winter	2010
Skilljar	Washington, USA	Sandi Lin	2013
TalentLMS	California, USA	Thanos Papangelis	2012
Teckedin.com	New Mexico, USA	Debby Kruzic	2016
Vartopia	Wyoming, USA	Michael Reilly	2009

Channel Incentives Management (CIM)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
360insights	Ontario, Canada	Jason Atkins	2008
ACB	New York, USA	Michael Bookman	1917
Ansira	Missouri, USA	Jay Dettling	1919
Aprimo	Illinois, USA	John Stammen	2006
Apttus	California, USA	Frank Holland	2006
BI Worldwide	Minnesota, USA	Gary Hansen	1950
Brandmuscle	Illinois, USA	Scott Weeren	2000
Channel Fusion	Iowa, USA	Pankaj Monga	2003
Channel Mechanics	Galway, Ireland	Kenneth Fox	2011
ChannelAssist	Ontario, Canada	David Auld	1999
Collinson Group	London, UK	Chris Evans	1992
Comviva	Haryana, India	Manoranjan Mohapatra	1999
CR Worldwide	Warwickshire, UK	David Gould	2002
E2open	California, USA	Michael Farlekas	2004
Fielo	California, USA	Sanjay Agarwal	2010
Gage	Minnesota, USA	Tom Belle	1992
Hawk Incentives	Texas, USA	Sheree Thornsberry	2015
HeraldLogic	Maharashtra, India	Ram Ramdas	2000
Hinda Incentives	Illinois, USA	Michael Donnelly	1970
HMI Performance Incentives	Massachusetts, USA	Kiwon Chang	1980
Impact	California, USA	David Yovanno	2008
Incentive Solutions	Georgia, USA	Mark Herbert	1994
ITA Group	Iowa, USA	Tom Mahoney	1963
Maritz	Missouri, USA	Michael Sinoway	1894
Market Medium	California, USA	Jason Bletz	2015
Model N	California, USA	Jason Blessing	1999
Netformx	California, USA	Ittai Bareket	1994
Online Rewards	Texas, USA	Michael Levy	2002
Partnerize	Newcastle, UK	Malcolm Cowley	2010
Perks WW Channel	Arkansas, USA	Jeff Ford	1998
Sproutloud	Florida, USA	Jared Shusterman	2006
Vistex	Illinois, USA	Sanjay Shah	1999
Vortex 6	Bracknell, UK	Peter Olive	2009
WorkStride	New York, USA	Tom Silk	1999

Channel Data Management (CDM)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
360insights	Ontario, Canada	Jason Atkins	2008
Aximpro	Bavaria, Germany	Andreas Reid	2008
bChannels	Oxfordshire, UK	Phil Gowing	1999
Bizcise	Washington, USA	Matt Wilson	2017
Canalys	Singapore	Steve Brazier	1998
Channel360	Hampshire, UK	Mark Fowler, COO	1999
Compubase	Les Ulis, France	Jack Mandard	1989
Computer Market Research	California, USA	Del Heles	1984
Crossbeam	Pennsylvania, USA	Bob Moore	2018
E2open	California, USA	Michael Farlekas	2004
Everthere	Tel Aviv, Israel	Maayan Levy	2014
Gorilla Corporation	California, USA	Carlo Tortora Brayda di Belvedere	1992
IQBlade	Liverpool, UK	Ben Abraham	2016
Model N	California, USA	Jason Blessing	1999
PartnerOptimizer	California, USA	Dina Moskowitz	2011
Q2E	California, USA	Mahesh Rao	2016
Salesforce	California, USA	Marc Benioff	1999
Successful Channels	Massachusetts, USA	Gary Morris	2015

Channel Finance, Pricing, And Inventory

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
AppBind	California, USA	Sunir Shah	2018
AppDirect	California, USA	Nicolas Desmarais	2009
Apttus	California, USA	Frank Holland	2006
ChannelAdvisor	North Carolina, USA	David Spitz	2001
ChannelCentral	Essex, UK	Tim Moyle	2007
Channelkonnect	Bengaluru, India	Basaveswarlu Boyapati	2015
Cleverbridge	Cologne, Germany	Craig Vodnik	2005
Computer Market Research	California, USA	Del Heles	1984
DemandBridge	Georgia, USA	David Rich	1975
E2open	California, USA	Michael Farlekas	2004
iasset.com	California, USA	Scott Frew	2008
Model N	California, USA	Jason Blessing	1999
Oracle PRM	California, USA	Safra Catz	1977
PROS	Texas, USA	Andres Reiner	1985
Salesforce	California, USA	Marc Benioff	1999
SAP	California, USA	Christian Klein	1996
servicePath	Ontario, Canada	Daniel Kube	2011
Tackle.io	Idaho, USA	John Jahnke	2016
Vendavo	Colorado, USA	Bruno Slosse	1998
Vistex	Illinois, USA	Sanjay Shah	1999

Channel Ecosystem Management

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
Allianceboard	Quebec, Canada	Louis Rinfret	2017
Apideck	California, USA	Gertjan De Wilde	2018
Constellant	Texas, USA	Bhavesh Patal	2001
Crossbeam	Pennsylvania, USA	Bob Moore	2018
Everthere	Tel Aviv, Israel	Maayan Levy	2014
Impact	California, USA	David Yovanno	2008
LogicBay	North Carolina, USA	John Panaccione	1980
P2P Global	Ohio, USA	John Guido	2019
Partner to Profit	Vermont, USA	Keith Gaylord	2015
partnered.io	New York, USA	Adam J. Michalski	2018
Partnerize	Newcastle, UK	Malcolm Cowley	2010
PartnerOptimizer	California, USA	Dina Moskowitz	2011
PartnerStack	Ontario, Canada	Bryn Jones	2015
Postbeyond	Ontario, Canada	David Lloyd	2013
Qollabi	Brussels, Belgium	Friedrich Pétré	2009
TIDWIT	Virginia, USA	Wissam (Will) Yafi	2003
TUNE	Washington, USA	Peter Hamilton	2009
Webinfinity	New York, USA	James Hodgkinson	2012
WorkSpan	California, USA	Mayank Singh Bawa	2015