The Best 6 Free Partner Relationship Management Software

“Coming together embarks a new beginning, staying together means progress, and working together drives success.” - Henry Ford. 

Did you notice the beauty of the statement? How emphatically and precisely did the American Business Magnate and Industrialist Henry Ford define partner relationships in the simplest of words? Well, it’s no secret formula that the success stories of most leading and top business organizations have cultivated robust and long-term partnerships. 

A sturdy, persistent, and consolidated business partnership opens the gateway to a plethora of new opportunities. It can boost sales, drive smarter decisions, and lead to improved scalability and flexibility. However, since enterprises have to survive and thrive in a challenging competitive environment, they strive for intelligent and innovative tools that cater to fast-changing business scenarios. 

The emergence of Partner Relationship Management Software has proved to be a game-changer for most companies, regardless of size. It has allowed entrepreneurs to gauge recent industry trends and plan for expanding their digital footprint. 

An Introduction to Partner Relationship Management 

First things first, let’s introduce partner relationship management (PRM). PRM is a combination of strategies, methodologies, and processes that help businesses streamline and efficiently manage business relationships. 

To be precise, business partners can be anyone, including freelancers, publishers, affiliates, influencers, and others involved in selling various products and services. All these people are part of the digital supply chain process. 

The essential aspect of partner relationship management is building mutual trust. You also need to focus on establishing a substantial collaboration with a clear understanding of goals and expectations. Effective communication is also an integral part of PRM. 

Everything must be well-defined right from the beginning. It means a precise understanding of partner programs, their roles, and responsibilities, emphasizing information-sharing. 

The Foundation of Partner Relationship Management is Based on Five Pivotal Elements

The Purpose of Partner Relationship Management

Partner Relationship Management plays versatile roles in seeking fresh opportunities and gaining traction in the market. PRM solves various purposes, such as

Build a Successful Partner Relationship Management Strategy

Partner relationship management helps streamline the channel sales process, simplify onboarding, and provide comprehensive support to all partners. But to maximize the benefits of PRM, you must create a successful strategy. 

• Selecting the right partners: The first critical step is recruiting and onboarding the right partners to create an experienced cross-functional team. You want your partners to have comprehensive knowledge of your products and services and the ability to resolve various issues. They must also have experience catering to versatile projects and know how to drive more customers and sales. 
• Provide extensive training: It becomes essential to invest in providing comprehensive training and resource materials. The partner training program offers your partners complete knowledge of products and delivery methods according to industry standards. The training programs can include video tutorials and product documentation with a simplified, accessible approach.  
• Build a marketing and communication strategy: Collaboration and communication are the two integral pillars of partner relationship management. Hence come up with a plan on how to enhance communication in various partner channels. It is imperative to share all the vital information with your partners to spend less time searching for the same. Allow your partners to unleash the benefits of deal registration, lead distribution, and marketing development funds to track and analyze marketing campaign insights.        
• Content to support the partners: You need to support your partners in every possible manner. One effective way is to provide content in marketing materials, product documentation, video tutorials, and playbooks. Make sure that the content gets delivered quickly to the right partners. 
• Use data to improve decision-making: Maximize data usage to drive smarter decisions with real-time reporting, performance metrics, tracked opportunities, and more. Also, you can make more improved predictions. 
• Avoid partner churn: If you want to create a viable and productive PRM strategy, take the necessary steps to avoid partner churn. Focus on building a substantial and long-term partnership. Also, keep updating the partner programs to generate more lead conversations and reduce sales cycles. 

PRM versus CRM 

The Key Obstacles of Partner Relationship Management

As an entrepreneur, you may have to encounter a few partner relationship management challenges, becoming an obstacle to seamless business operations. Let’s highlight them. 

 

All About Partner Relationship Management Software

Partner Relationship Management Software is an advanced system and application that seamlessly monitors and tracks sales and partner activities with a broad range of features and tools. The PRM tool also plays an essential role in building innovative strategies to boost collaboration between channel partners and business organizations. 

The PRM tools have introduced reliable methodologies and web-based applications, processes, etc. These include a rich content library, effective business planning, seamless integration with CRM, deal registration, indirect sales pipeline reporting, and more. 

The Power-Packed Features of Partner Relationship Management Software 

One of the crucial aspects that empower partner relationship management software is the core features discussed below.

1. Channel Marketing: Channel marketing is a technique for increasing your sales force by adopting a customer-centric approach. It helps you target potential customers via various touchpoints and gather in-depth information about them. 
2. Deal Management: Deal management focuses on setting up deal parameters and workflows. It can include customer history, team members, roles, operational constraints, status, etc. 
3. Contact Management: This feature allows you to note and record every detail of your contact or customer interactions and track their status. Contact management tools are integrated with CRM applications to improve sales and services. 
4. Co-Branding: A viable marketing strategy that uses various brand names on any product or service as part of a strategic partnership. It serves as a brand reputation feature helping to improve the goodwill of two or more brands.
5. Onboarding: The software enables you to find, recruit, and onboard experienced partners and affiliates. The partner onboarding process involves providing the necessary information and skills so that they can sell your products quickly and easily. It helps strengthen relationships, save costs, and enhance productivity.  
6. Partner Portal: The partner portal is an all-exclusive dashboard that provides complete information about channel partners and their activities. It also offers various other details on sales, products, leads, performance, and more. 
7. Lead Management: This unique feature allows you to grow and manage your new clientele, targeting them using different marketing campaigns. You can track prospective customers, whether they make a purchase or not. 
8. Reporting and Analytics: Reporting involves presenting factual data and organizing it into a summary. On the other hand, analytics focuses on exploring the gathered data to derive insights. 
9. Resource Library: The resource library is an enriched collection of whitepapers, blogs, articles, webinars, and case studies. These content resources help to increase partners' and customers' knowledge of the product. 
10. Training and Certification: Training and certification are undoubtedly vital parts of the partner relationship management system. They help develop partner skills and provide substantial knowledge about products and services, enabling faster product sales. 

The Benefits of Partner Relationship Management Software 

Free PRM tools help to automate wide-ranging tasks from marketing to sales. In addition to that, the generation application provides several other benefits, which are as follows-

• Simplify new partners’ discovery: Organizations often struggle to find reliable and understanding partners to boost product sales. PRM software can simplify this entire process through advanced recruiting and training solutions. 
• All info in one place: Using the partner portal system, you can get all essential and relevant information in one place. You can track partner performance, sales and revenue, ongoing marketing campaigns, and many more things through a single platform. 
• Provide necessary tools to support partners: Partner assistance is critical for successful business operations.PRM applications provide all the essential support and help through proper marketing and communication channels. The training involves providing complete knowledge of the product to offer an improved customer experience.
• Easier to introduce new products: Companies can introduce new products hassle-free through the PRM tools. The free partner relationship management software helps provide real-time feedback on the latest developments so that sales managers and reps can plan better strategies to upscale them. 
• Marketing and Sales Automation: One key advantage that PRM software provides is automating both the marketing and sales processes. It improves communication, sends large numbers of customized emails, and boosts campaigns when required. It also streamlines the tedious and time-consuming sales process and tracks insights daily, weekly, or monthly. 
• Managing and Tracking Leads: With PRM tools, it has become much more accessible and seamless for partners to register and track qualified leads. 
• Tracking Partner Performance: You can track partner performance through real-time channel statistics and intelligent analytics and set the commissions and rewards accordingly. 

Industries Getting Fueled by Partner Relationship Management Software 

According to Gartner, Partner Relationship Management Software mainly disrupts four types of industries: software, hardware, manufacturing, and telecommunications. It has also fueled retail, banking, finance, healthcare services, travel, etc. 

Partner Relationship Management Software has gained momentum, disrupting an array of business domains. However, free PRM tools have indeed become a preferred choice for small business enterprises and startups. They can implement the software without paying a single penny and help their businesses thrive. 

List of 6 Free Partner Relationship Management Software

1. Elioplus PRM
2. ChannelPRM
3. Partnered
4. CrossBeam 
5. PartnerTap
6. Allbound

Comparison of the Best 6 Free Partner Relationship Management Software 

Elioplus PRM (Free PRM Software) 

Elioplus PRM is the best free partner relationship management software that offers extensive support to every SaaS and cloud-based business regardless of its size. You can implement the free PRM tool to streamline collaboration, boost channel sales, and provide attractive incentives to your existing partners. The real-time partner-to-partner alignment helps to increase lead distribution and accelerate the registration as well as the onboarding process. 

The software can integrate with top customer relationship management platforms such as HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Salesforce. It is a fully secured application tool with 99.9% platform uptime and an SSL certificate enabled. 

The software’s free plan allows you to manage 25 partners with 2 GB of library storage and various other features. 

Image source: Elioplus PRM

Features: 

• The onboarding feature allows you to upload all files and documents for automatic access. 
• The deal registration provides robust security to the channel partners.  
• You can send the best leads to all your channel partners. 
• The analytics help gain valuable insights into channel networks’ performance and extensively analyze each of your partners. 
• Communicate with your partners in real-time and create groups with ease to increase revenue generation.
• The software also provides a unique partner portal where you can upload your logo, sign-in URL, and sign-up facility.
• A Partner Locator option helps your visitors and customers easily find a local company or dealer. 
• Customize the partner portal based on your business needs. 
• The real-time alerts and notifications keep your partners active, sending them critical updates. 
• Manage the commissions and incentives with ease with the tier management system.
• All plans have the option of adding limitless team members.
• View all your partners’ activities on a single page. 

ChannelPRM (Free Partner Relationship Management Software)

ChannelPRM is another viable option if you are searching for a free partner relationship management tool. The software company specializes in creating and operating successful organizational solutions to expand geographical locations and enhance indirect sales channels. The tool also helps you enable your partners, efficiently manage projects quickly, and monitor all activities. 

You have to register on the platform to activate the individual portal. ChannelPRM focuses on five different areas that help you provide quick access to your documents and contact persons. These include onboarding, marketing, training the partners, channel sales, and the community feature. 

Besides the free version of the software, ChannelPRM also offers a free demo to all its users. 

Image source: ChannelPRM 

Features-

• Invite the existing and potential partners to enhance the onboarding facility.
• Allow them to create and register their business profile. 
• ChannelPRM also provides you with the benefit of an automated workflow process.
• Let your partners gather all customer information and register the sales deals. 
• The software also offers complete marketing resources such as videos, flyers, templates, logos, and guidelines, all in the library. 
• Update your partners with the latest events, news, and promotions through real-time notifications.
• The software offers on-site training, allowing you to access the webinars., presentations, and demonstrations. 
• ChannelOS is an open SaaS platform on which you can explore a wide range of applications, such as business planning, marketing automation, sales management, service automation, partner community, and more. 

Partnered (Free Partner Relationship Management Software)

If you want to improve your partner relationships and generate more revenue, you have probably arrived at the right destination. Partnered is a free partner relationship management tool that helps increase your partner-assisted sales and sourced sales quickly. It is indeed one of the quickest ways to surge the channel partner sales. 

Partnered unleashes many benefits, such as mitigating the requirement for account mapping and managing workflows. The software also provides real-time analytics and valuable insights into how the partnership is affecting your sales, further improving sales operations and efficiency.

The software also focuses on customer success through enterprise-grade secure connections and to keep data safe and encrypted. The pricing model is simple. Use the free plan to add five partners, unlimited users, and complete sack integration. You can even request a free demo of the software.  

 

Image source: Partnered 

Features-

• Partnered is a free account-based partnership solution that helps to streamline sales partnership management. 
• The software provides a simple setup, allowing you to map your account automatically. 
• The advanced collaboration tools help to simplify the workflow process. 
• Get access to attribution data reporting for assisted and sourced deals. 
• The security gets bolstered with data encryption and safe connection to have better control over sensitive information. 
• Faster integration allows you to connect with all existing tools. 

Crossbeam (Free Partner Relationship Management Software)

Crossbeam is a leading partner relationship management software that provides a real-time account mapping facility, free for a lifetime. The software allows you to easily connect with customer relationship management applications such as HubSpot and SalesForce. You can enter into a partnership in a secured company-to-company environment. 

You can also find out the potential leads, opportunities, customers, and overlaps to share the information seamlessly across the platforms. You can add data to Slack and Salesforce to streamline the workflows. You can even send a customized invitation to enhance the partner-base 

The software automatically synchronizes the general sales and customer data from the CRM automation system, data warehouses, and billing tools. The application supports Comma-Separated Value (CSV) files. 

Image source: Crossbeam 

Features-

• Crossbeam helps you provide real-time account mapping without any spreadsheet requirements. 
• Get instant updates on overlapping accounts as well.
• Generate more qualified leads and achieve higher sales through a sophisticated partner ecosystem. Help the sales team close deals quickly. 
• Find out the overlapping targets to avert the sales channel conflict. 
• Slack provides real-time customizable notifications related to partner invitations and overlaps.
• CrossBeam is also committed to providing unmatched data security SOC2 Type ll, CCPA, GDPR, etc. 
• Retrieve data and insights from the platform programmatically to use in your systems with REST API’s help. 
• Target the potential customers, leads, etc., perfectly with a co-marketing playbook. 

PartnerTap (Partner Relationship Management Software Providing a Free Account for Sales Reps)

PartnerTap is a prominent partner relationship management software that helps to surge your sales and partner performance. The application serves as a viable tool for both the sales team and the channels. The partner ecosystem is a crucial asset for business organizations providing access to more customers, buyers, and influencers. The partner ecosystem also helps in business expansion and more revenue generation. 

PartnerTap also provides a viable scope to seamlessly integrate popular CRM tools, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle NetSuite CRM, Salesforce, HubSpot, SAP Concur, etc.

The software provides robust security, access control, and data protection with GDPR compliance and SOC2. It means that you can gain more control over the type of data you want to share with others. Also, there is no limit on the partner invitation. Also, you can automate the partner account mapping process to get fully updated information on each account. 

The software offers co-selling opportunities where you can gain real-time insights from sales reps and partner sales. This is not a free partner relationship management tool, but it provides a free account for the sales reps. 

Image Source: PartnerTap

Features-

• The software automates the process of partner account mapping. 
• The channel mapping provides instant access to strategic growth opportunities with each of the partners.
• PartnerTap caters to the needs of a wide range of industries, such as healthcare, banking networks, travel, hardware and software, telecommunications, etc.
• Connect with all your potential partners quickly to share information in real time. You can also choose the partners with whom you want to work. 
• The channel and acceleration tool allows you to monitor the entire addressable market, market overlap, and list of sales accounts for each partner.
• Align your sales reps and team with strategic partners so that they can escalate the deal in their territories. 
• Get real-time information on the amount of revenue sourced and generated by each of the partners.

Allbound (Partner Relationship Management Software with Free Demo)

Do you want to streamline and simplify your partner lifecycle? If you answered yes, Allbound is the best solution for carrying out various operations such as onboarding, marketing alignment, and registering the deal. Partner Relationship Management Software offers a wide array of products, such as channel marketing, channel insights, sales, and integrations. 

For instance, channel marketing offers a customized partner portal that helps you to improve partner programs. Similarly, the onboarding process enables you to access the training modules seamlessly. If one talks about channel sales, you get deal registration, playbook, and prospect pages. 

With Allbound, you can easily connect with your preferred CRM tool from a wide range of options. You also have the facility of channel insights that help you measure partner programs’ success and unify data to make smarter decisions. 

The software is not free but only provides a free demonstration of the product. 

Image source: Allbound

Features

• The software plays a pivotal role in increasing partner engagement to sell faster and enhance their experience. 
• Automate your tasks to mitigate the waiting period request from the partners. 
• Increase your brand visibility with co-branding materials. 
• Leverage the power of data to gain more visibility into the channel program and gather vital insights on partners, resources, and sales. 
• This PRM tool also allows you to focus on indirect sales. The software frees you from using the spreadsheet. 
• Allbound has recently added a new feature: a content management tool that helps curate and manage engaging content. 
• The software has a rich content library where you can store unlimited content and gain more control over partner groups’ specific material. 
• The automated market development funds, or MDF, allow you to exercise more control over partner marketing campaigns with CRM integration, email notifications, and document-sharing facilities. 
• There is a co-branding feature that helps partners to improve their selling abilities. 

So far, this blog has highlighted and emphasized the best six free partner relationship management software. However, the discussion is somewhat incomplete without mentioning Channeltivity, the most popular PRM application tool. So, let’s get into the details. 

Channeltivity (Popular PRM Software) 

Channeltivity is a top-notch, leading cloud-powered partner relationship management software that is user-friendly and provides a quick setup. The PRM application also plays a crucial role in simplifying deal registration, managing channel leads, MDF requests, training, etc. Furthermore, it can seamlessly connect with prominent CRM software such as HubSpot and SalesForce through a single robust partner portal. 

The software offers a unique feature known as Co-Branded Collateral. You can design custom templates and develop on-demand co-branded marketing materials. Besides, distribution management simplifies the two-tier selling model and streamlines distributor activities in the partner portal. 

Channeltivity allows you to unleash various other benefits, such as managing the MDF, commission and referral, lead distribution, and business strategy planning. It also has a training and certification module that enables you to create and automate the distribution of training materials and monitor partner progress. 

Some additional features, such as partner recruitment and profiling, content management, email notification, deal registration, discussion forums, etc., give your business an edge. 

Image source: Channeltivity

Features-

• The channel partner portal lets you recruit more partners and manage them efficiently through engaging content and messages. 
• Channel deal registration allows you to increase partner collaboration.
• The HubSpot Edition helps increase your pipeline visibility in real time between the channel platform and HubSpot CRM. Salesforce CRM streamlines the data flow. 
• Easily monitor your sales and simplify the referral workflow, commissions, and payments. 
• Provide access to secured and configured materials using the partner portal. 
• MDF enables you to manage your marketing resources and funds. 
• Onboarding partners and instant reporting get simplified with channel partner recruitment. 
• Channeltivity provides GDPR compliance, allowing you to understand the risks and responsibilities of channel programs. 
• Share the content and your thought leadership across various social media platforms to increase customer engagement and reduce the sales cycle. 
• The software offers an intuitive, all-in-one dashboard that enables you to control all activities, such as viewing partner performance, tracking partner profiles, recruitment pipeline, sales analytics, etc. 

Conclusion 

A recently released report indicates that the Partner Relationship Management Software market is expected to reach $679 million by 2023 at a 14.2% CAGR. The report further estimates that a combination of the PRM ecosystem, software, and services will generate a global market share of $1.65 billion by 2023. The leading industries that will disrupt the partner relationship management tool market include technology and telecommunications at 34%, followed by manufacturing at 23%. 

Implementing partner relationship management software has become necessary for business organizations to consolidate relationships, boost sales, and win profitable deals. The tool also serves as a critical asset for engaging and managing channel partners, training and certification, real-time pipeline visibility, and more. You can even create innovative marketing strategies and make smarter decisions to stay ahead in the game. 

The blog has shed substantial light on free PRM software tools, including their core features. But if you go through the list, you will come across several other applications such as Zoho CRM, Impartner, LogicBay, MindMatrix, ZIFI, etc. 

If you have used any of these tools or any other software in the past, you can provide valuable reviews or feedback on them. 

Feel free to visit our software directory page to check out the various software categories to grow your business.