Channel Software Tech Stack 2021

Jay McBain, Principal Analyst

Jan 12 2021

The channel software stack comprises a group of technologies that help companies develop, design, and execute plans to find, recruit, onboard, develop, enable, incent, co-sell 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 8.9% growth during COVID-19-impacted 2020, as measured by employee hiring through LinkedIn.

One of the lasting effects of 2020 for the channel will be the changing programs we saw announced throughout the year. Late in the summer, we saw Chuck Robbins announce that Cisco would pursue a 100% subscription/consumption business — accelerated due to COVID-19. A few weeks later, Michael Dell announced the same thing for Dell Technologies — and all seven companies within its family of businesses — pushing $92 billion into a recurring business. Later in the year, IBM jettisoned its storied services business to focus on multicloud, hybrid cloud, and, yes, becoming 100% subscription/consumption. HPE, which has been on the journey for three years with GreenLake, announced that it will be fully there by 2022 — next year! Needless to say, we monitored (and helped) dozens of large vendors announce their trifurcated “build, sell, and service” programs catering to transacting AND nontransacting partners as well as traditional AND nontraditional.

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.

In an Accenture survey, 76% of business leaders agree that current business models will be unrecognizable in the next five years — ecosystems will be the main change agent. I personally was involved in a few hundred inquiries (30-minute meetings) with channel professionals who were asking about ecosystem design, recruitment, mapping, management, measurement, enablement programs, and collaboration. The discussions were not about revenue-tiered models and gross-to-net margins but of driving value creation, leveraging network effects, and incubating co-innovation.

There are distinct patterns (or subcategories) emerging in the ecosystem space.

The channel software tech stack from 2020 included 18 companies that I put into a new “ecosystem management” bucket. These companies drove $93 million in pure software sales last year, according to my research. The number of companies have doubled this year to 36, and the revenue has almost doubled as well, to $173 million.

This includes:

Recruitment (at nonlinear scale)
Attribution (moving from consumer marketing attribution into B2B influencer)
Account mapping (innovative double-blind data “escrow”-type services)
Enablement/collaboration (at scale)
Marketplace and technology/API integrations
Ecosystem management (transacting/nontransacting and traditional/nontraditional)

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 (PX). 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 183 companies across seven technology categories that drove $2.8 billion in pure software revenue in 2020 (the vast majority in a software-as-a-service model).

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, co-selling, and co-marketing. 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 co-branded 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 marketplaces, 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. Marketplaces are starting to make their mark here.

Channel ecosystem management — Manages the influence, transaction, and retention channels across the entire customer buying journey. It supports recruitment, attribution, account and partner mapping, enablement, collaboration, technology/API integrations, and overall ecosystem management covering all transacting/nontransacting and traditional/nontraditional partners.

The future of channels, alliances, 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!

CHANNEL LEARNING & READINESS (CLR)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
360Learning	France, France	Nick Hernandez	2013
Absorb LMS	Alberta, Canada	Mike Owens	2003
Adobe Captivate Prime	California, USA	Shantanu Narayen	1982
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	1999
ChannelCentral	Essex, UK	Tim Moyle	2007
ChannelEZ	California, USA	Sam Gadi	2013
ChannelPro REACH	Dubai, UAE	Elias Bou Ghosn	2018
CM-Focus	Texas, USA	Girish Balakrishnan	2008
Cornerstone	California, USA	Phil Saunders	1999
CoSell.io	California, USA	Rob Brown	2019
Crowd Wisdom	Florida, USA	Sharon Love	2017
CSG Services	Washington, USA	Ian McAlister	1997
Elioplus	Athens, Greece	Elias Ndreu	2015
Expertus	California, USA	Ramesh Ramani	1998
Fision	Minnesota, USA	Mike Brown	2011
Flipdeck	California, USA	Lee Mayfield	2015
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
Latitude Learning	Michigan, USA	Jeff Walter	2003
LeadMethod	Oregon, USA	Justin Johnson	2014
LeadSmart Technologies	California, USA	Kevin Brown	2018
Mediafly	Illinois, USA	Carson Conant	2006
Mobileforce	California, USA	Jagadish Bandhole	2011
NetExam	Texas, USA	Brett Strauss	1999
PartnerAmp	Wisconson, USA	Jon Aleckson	1999
Partnerhood	California, USA	Elay Cohen	2013
PartnerInsight	UK, 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

THROUGH-CHANNEL MARKETING AUTOMATION (TCMA)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
Ansira	Missouri, USA	Jay Dettling	1919
Aprimo	Illinois, USA	Erik Huddleston	2006
Awin	Berlin, Germany	Mark Walters	2000
BrandMaker	Germany, 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 by Pica9	New York, USA	Kevin Groome	2001
Channel Fusion	Iowa, USA	Pankaj Monga	2003
ChannelXperts	Landau, Germany	Volker Wiora	2006
Channext	Utrecht, Netherlands	Rick van den Bosch	2018
Code Worldwide	England, UK	Matt McNeany	2003
Computer Market Research	California, USA	Del Heles	1984
ContentMX	Massachusetts, USA	Jeffrey Mesnik	2009
DemandBridge	Georgia, USA	David Rich	1975
Distribion	Texas, USA	Eric Meyers	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
Powerchord	Florida, USA	William Volmuth	2001
promoboxx	Massachusetts, USA	Brent Delehey	2010
Relevize	Massachusetts, USA	Michael Nardella	2019
RVLVR	California, USA	Mike Trevino	2017
Silvercrest	California, USA	William Rodriguez	2011
Sitecore	California, USA	Mark Frost	1999
Spark Your Channel	Colorado, USA	Heather K. Margolis	2020
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
twogether	Marlow, UK	Kirsty Gilchrist	2001
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 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	Erik Huddleston	2006
BI Worldwide	Minnesota, USA	Abby Cohen	1950
Blackhawk Network	Texas, USA	Talbott Roche	2015
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
ChannelPro REACH	Dubai, UAE	Elias Bou Ghosn	2018
Collinson Group	London, UK	Chris Evans	1992
Comviva	Haryana, India	Manoranjan Mohapatra	1999
Conga	California, USA	Noel Goggin	2006
E2open	California, USA	Michael Farlekas	2004
Fielo	California, USA	Sanjay Agarwal	2010
Flintfox	Auckland, New Zealand	Mike Ridgway	1987
Gage	Minnesota, USA	Tom Belle	1992
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	Brent Vander Waal	1963
Maritz	Missouri, USA	Steve Maritz	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	Matt Gilbert	2010
Sproutloud	Florida, USA	Jared Shusterman	2006
Vanson	Minnesota, USA	Chris Vanderploeg	1997
Vistex	Illinois, USA	Sanjay Shah	1999
Vortex 6	Bracknell, UK	Peter Olive	2009
WorkStride	New York, USA	Tom Silk	1999
Xoxoday	Karnataka, India	Sumit Khandelwal	2012

PARTNER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (PRM)

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
Allbound	Arizona, USA	Daniel Graff-Radford	2014
AppDirect	California, USA	Nicolas Desmarais	2017
Aximpro	Bavaria, Germany	Andreas Reid	2008
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	Elias Ndreu	2015
GorillaToolz	New York, USA	Jay Fruin	2007
Impartner	Utah, USA	Joe Wang	1997
Inova Software	France, France	Gilles Toulemonde	2010
Kiflo PRM	France, France	Steven Muhr	2018
LogicBay	North Carolina, USA	Tim Lindsay	1980
Magentrix	Ontario, Canada	Sam Arjmandi	2012
Mindmatrix	Pennsylvania, USA	Harbinder Khera	1998
myprm	Levallois-Perret, France	Richard Bessis	2015
NowApps ChannelKonnect	Bengaluru, India	Basaveswarlu Boyapati	2015
Oracle PRM	California, USA	Safra Catz	1977
PartnerPortal.io	Ontario, Canada	Jonathan Coy	2018
PartnerStack	Ontario, Canada	Bryn Jones	2015
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

CHANNEL MARKETPLACES, FINANCE, PRICING, & INVENTORY

Company	Headquarters	CEO	Founded
AppBind	California, USA	Sunir Shah	2018
AppDirect	California, USA	Nicolas Desmarais	2017
AppXite	Riga, Latvia	Nicolas Albana	2014
ChannelAdvisor	North Carolina, USA	David Spitz	2001
ChannelCentral	Essex, UK	Tim Moyle	2007
Cleverbridge	Cologne, Germany	Craig Vodnik	2005
CloudBlue	California, USA	Nimesh Davé	2015
Computer Market Research	California, USA	Del Heles	1984
Conga	California, USA	Noel Goggin	2006
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
NowApps ChannelKonnect	Bengaluru, India	Basaveswarlu Boyapati	2015
Oracle PRM	California, USA	Safra Catz	1977
PROS	Texas, USA	Andres Reiner	1985
Renewtrak	New South Wales, Australia	Mathew Cagney	2014
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
Vendasta	Saskatchewan, Canada	Brendan King	2008
Vendavo	Colorado, USA	Bruno Slosse	1998
Vistex	Illinois, USA	Sanjay Shah	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, Singapore	Steve Brazier	1998
Channel360	Hampshire, UK	Mark Fowler	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
TechTarget	Massachusetts, USA	Mike Cotoia	1999
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
AppXite	Riga, Latvia	Nicolas Albana	2014
Balluun	California, USA	Deepak Gupta	2009
Breezy.io	England, UK	Alex Phillips	2019
ChannelCentral	Essex, UK	Tim Moyle	2007
CloudBlue	California, USA	Nimesh Davé	2015
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
Ingenious Technologies	Berlin, Germany	Siamak Haschemi	2012
LogicBay	North Carolina, USA	Tim Lindsay	1980
MeasureMatch	England, UK	James Sandoval	2016
Mirakl	Paris, France	Philippe Corrot	2011
Moonshot	Madrid, Spain	David Suriol Puigvert	2017
P2P Global	Ohio, USA	John Guido	2019
Partner to Profit	Vermont, USA	Keith Gaylord	2015
PartnerConnect	California, USA	Rohan Kulkarni	2017
Partnered.io	New York, USA	Adam Michalski	2018
Partnerize	Newcastle, UK	Matt Gilbert	2010
PartnerOptimizer	California, USA	Dina Moskowitz	2011
PartnerPrograms.io	Illinois, USA	Alex Glenn	2018
PartnerStack	Ontario, Canada	Bryn Jones	2015
Postbeyond	Ontario, Canada	David Lloyd	2013
Pronto	California, USA	Swaroop Kolli	2018
Qollabi	Brussels, Belgium	Friedrich Pétré	2009
Sharework	Paris, France	Simon Bouchez	2018
Spiisee	Ontario, Canada	Carl Watene	2018
TIDWIT	Virginia, USA	Wissam (Will) Yafi	2003
Tr3dent	Galway, Ireland	Kevin McCaffrey	2011
TUNE	Washington, USA	Cameron Stewart	2009
Vation Ventures	Colorado, USA	Dave O’Callaghan	2017
VikRee	Singapore, Singapore	Srihari Govindarajan	2020
Webinfinity	New York, USA	James Hodgkinson	2012
WorkSpan	California, USA	Mayank Singh Bawa	2015