RelayWare, Inc. Launch
Hi, I am Mike Morgan, CEO of RelayWare. RelayWare is a global provider of Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solutions. Our cloud-based software helps companies to optimize partner performance and maximize indirect sales. Today, after many years of success in Europe and Asia, RelayWare launches its North American operations to support our existing US customers and provide our unique solutions to many more.
Our product, also called RelayWare, provides our customers with all of the tools and automation they need to facilitate and administer every conceivable partner program deliverable and delivers enterprise-class performance in an easy to buy, easy to use SaaS package. Our customers generally come to us with common challenges associated with managing partners, and have told us that no other PRM system can do all the things at the depth and breadth that they found with RelayWare. Some others, following deployment, are enjoying efficiencies in areas they were unaware that they were deficient. It’s surprising to learn how many companies rely on the channel and yet have very little insight into its performance. By way of example, I was visiting a prospect in the security software space recently, and I asked who their top performing partner was, the name of the top salesperson at that reseller and what percentage of their channel revenue they represented. They didn’t know and it occurred to them that there was not one central location from which to obtain this information, and even then, they were unable to guarantee its accuracy. Without this arguably rudimentary kind of information, accurately targeted partner marketing is impossible.
We pass no judgment here, as this is not uncommon. We’ve had numerous conversations with analysts in the past couple of weeks, and they agree that companies are suffering fallout from not properly engaging with their channel and that there is a huge opportunity in the marketplace to help companies take control of the channel.
My team and I have encountered and overcome these challenges many times with years of practical experience in leading hi-tech vendors, analysts and consultancies like Siebel, Compaq, IDC, Hewlett Packard, Sequent, Sony and a host of successful start-ups. No other company possesses the practical experience, technical know-how and the technology to help our customers optimize partner performance like RelayWare.
Why now? Well, the market for Partner Relationship Management software is set to explode. The needs have always existed and we and a number of competitors have been around for some years but now and in the coming years, manufacturers face the “perfect storm”:
-Difficult economic conditions
-Rising cost of sale
-Declining profitability
-Decreased resource availability
-Headcount freezes or cuts
This means one thing – indirect channels are back in fashion! Gartner’s benchmark statistics in a recent report tell us, for example that 80% of PC sales will be fulfilled through indirect channels this year. And now vendors are realizing that their strategies, programs, processes and systems are inadequate or out of date. When this is combined with a growing trend for IT organizations to migrate key systems to a low-cost / low management-overhead SaaS model, there has never been a more important time for on-demand Partner Relationship Management software like RelayWare. Gartner told me last week that in their view “no one has really owned this market and run with it” – well that is set to change!
Our customer’s experiences speak for themselves. Please take a moment and look at our customer testimonials, including a brief video interview with Chris Doggett, the Vice President of Worldwide Channels (and a real “channel chief”) at Sophos , an organization that RelayWare is helping manage over 12,000 global partners and additional case studies.
We have an exciting year ahead with some amazing new product enhancements to RelayWare that any channel management professional will find positively mouthwatering. Our team is very excited about the opportunities that await us in North America as the market expands rapidly and we are positioned as the only truly end-to-end PRM solution. I hope you will revisit this blog to read our regular posts on customer stories, trends in the industry and the insights we’re sure to learn along the way and I welcome your own ideas and insights on mike.morgan@relayware.com.
¶ Posted July 20th, 2010 † Mike § Uncategorized ‡ No Comments |